Tom Blomqvist topped the opening free practice session for the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s eighth round of 2025 at Road America.
Action began as part of this weekend’s running of the SportsCar Grand Prix at America’s National Park of Speed before next year’s six-hour enduro.
The FP1 session ended six minutes prematurely after Phil Fayer suffered an impact into the barriers at Turn 12 with six minutes left of the 90-minute session.
Tom Blomqvist was quickest at Road America in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 GTP, which won at Watkins Glen, owing to his 1:51.255 lap time.
Heart of Racing’s #23 Aston Martin Valkyrie GTP finished in a close second in the overall classification after Ross Gunn’s 1:51.328 time, just 0.073 seconds behind.
Jack Aitken claimed third place in the #31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R and his 1:51.590 time, followed in fourth by Dries Vanthoor’s #24 RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 (1:51.655)
Nick ‘Mr 24’ Tandy rounded out the top five in the #6 Porsche Penske 963 (1:51.835) — the whole GTP field covered by just over 1 second.
United Autosports, the only LMP2 team with two Oreca 07 entries, had a difficult session after their #2 IMSA debutant Fayer’s incident — despite finishing second and third in the end.
This, however, was the second of two red flag disruptions as Daniel Goldburg (#22 United Autosports) went off-course at Turn 8 earlier on, though they returned to the session.
As a result of causing the red flags, both the #2 and #22 Oreca machines will have their fastest qualifying lap times lost.
TDS Racing heads LMP2 at Road America, Winward leads GT field
Peugeot Hypercar driver Mikkel Jensen was the fastest in the LMP2 category for the #11 TDS Racing Oreca (1:52.781) by three-tenths on the #22 Oreca’s benchmark of 1:53.146 set by fellow Peugeot team-mate Paul Di Resta.
Ben Hanley’s 1:53.404 put the #2 Oreca in second position ahead of another Peugeot Hypercar driver, Malthe Jakobsen, at the wheel of the #04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR Oreca.
The young Dane’s 1:53.500 lap time preceded the #79 JDC Miller MotorSports Oreca and Scott Andrews’ 1:53.601 in fifth position.
Meanwhile, in the combined GTD Pro and GTD order, Winward Racing’s #57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 (reigning GTD champions) went quickest with Russell Ward’s 2:04.991 lap time.
Vasser Sullivan’s #12 Lexus RC F GT3 took second with Parker Thompson’s 2:05.739 as Elliott Skeer rounded out the top-three (2:05.823) in the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3.R.
Fourth in the combined order, fastest in the GTD Pro class, were the most recent race winners – DragonSpeed.
Giacomo Altoe drove a lap time of 2:05.844 in the #81 Ferrari 296 GT3, putting it ahead of the #34 GTD-entered Conquest Racing Ferrari of Daniel Serra and his 2:05.953.
Nicky Catsburg was second in GTD Pro for the #4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R (2:06.028) and Andrea Caldarelli was third in the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 (2:06.056),
See here for the full classification of results from FP1 – FP2 takes place from 09:05 local time / 15:05 BST on Saturday 2 August.
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