Chip Ganassi Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais was fastest in the second and final free practice session for this weekend’s Grand Prix of Long Beach.
A 1-hour and 30-minute session gave teams a further opportunity to prepare for the upcoming qualifying session in addition to collecting more data for the first sprint race on the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship calendar.
Alike during the opening free practice running, lap times were closely matched around the bumpy, exciting street circuit.
Tijmen van der Helm started the session with a brief off-track excursion at Turn 1, exploring the limits of his #5 JDC Miller MotorSports Porsche 963.
After 20 minutes of FP2, supposed contact took place at Turn 11 – the iconic final corner hairpin – between Jesse Krohn’s #24 BMW RLL M Hybrid V8 and Loris Spinelli’s #78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2; both continued without further drama.
More cars explored the run-off areas which are limited around Long Beach’s unforgiving and tight corners, as drivers needed to understand the optimum cornering speeds to extract the quickest possible lap times.
It was Sebastien Bourdais in the #01 Cadillac V-Series.R who claimed the fastest lap time of a 1.11.637 during the final stages of FP2, narrowly beating Nick Yelloly’s 1:12.121 which became good for second place in his #25 BMW M Hybrid V8.
Third position was taken by Pipo Derani in the #31 Wehlen Cadillac with credit to a 1.12.218 lap time, followed by the Philipp Eng’s #24 BMW and a 1.12.454
Nick Tandy rounded off the top-five in GTP with a 1.12.579 in the #6 Porsche Penske 963.
Amidst those who took to the run-off, the likes of Sheena Monk for Gradient Racing took to both the Turn 1 and Turn 6 run-off in her #66 Acura NSX GT3, though did not incur any contact and so no damage.
Nevertheless, her teammate Stevan McAleer ended up fastest in GTD with a 1:18.259 lap time, followed by Danny Formal in the #45 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 and his 1:18.361.
Just behind in third position was the #34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 which resides fourth in the GTD standings. Albert Costa set a 1:18.382 time showcasing promise for the only Ferrari car competing in the full season.
Matt Bell took fourth place after he laid a 1:18.452 time in his #13 AWA Corvette Z06 GT3.R as Spinelli completed the top-five competitors with a 1:18.458, just six-thousandths behind Bell.
Qualifying is set to commence at 5pm local time / 1am UK time which will set up the grid for Saturday’s race.
See here for the full classification of results from free practice 2 at the Grand Prix of Long Beach.
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