Filipe Albuquerque topped a wet night practice session for the Rolex 24 at Daytona on Thursday evening.
The Portuguese driver reeled off a laptime of 1m 47.730 in the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05, 0.733s clear of Alex Palou in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi-VR.
The two drivers leapfrogged the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Tom Blomqvist, who led the session midway through but ultimately dropped to third overall.
Several significant teams opted to skip the session, which was once again affected by rain as it began falling shortly before the green flag. Amongst others, KCMG, The Heart of Racing and the #25 GTD Pro BMW M4 GT3 did not take part in the session.
G-Drive Racing once again led LMP2, as Luca Ghiotto posted a 1m 49.587s in the #69 ORECA 07-Gibson. The former F2 driver outpaced Tower Motorsport’s Ferdinand Habsburg and DragonSpeed’s Pato O’Ward, who took second and third respectively.
LMP3 was led by Belgian driver Ugo de Wilde, with his time in the #26 Muelhner Motorsports Duqueine D08 Nissan (1m 56.933s) nearly two full seconds faster than second-placed Seb Priaulx.
GTD Pro and GTD were once again led by Mercedes teams. Daniel Juncadella was the fastest GT car on the track, as the Spaniard posted a 1m 58.431s in the #97 GTD Pro-entered WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
He led the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Matt Campbell, who ended up behind the Raffaele Marciello-driven #75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo which was fastest in GTD.
Franck Perera was second in GTD in the #71 T3 Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo, leading fellow Lamborghini factory ace Andrea Caldarelli in the #63 TR3 Motorsports Lamborghini in GTD Pro.
The session was red-flagged once after half an hour as a result of spins for High Class Racing’s Dennis Andersen and TR3 Racing’s Bill Sweedler.
