IMSA at Road America: Cadillac and corvette top friday sessions

IMSA

Aug 5

Written By Car Racing Reporter

Cadillac 1-2 in both sessions at Road America.

📷 © Courtesy of IMSA. #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R and #01 Cadillac V-Series.R.

Cadillac Racing recorded the quickest lap times in free practice 1 and 2 – with different Cadillac V-Series.Rs holding the top spot on the time sheet – in preparation for the IMSA Sports Car Weekend at Road America.

Pipo Derani took over the seat in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R from Alexander Sims midway through the 90-minute afternoon session and posted the best lap of Grand Touring Prototype cars at 1 minute, 47.986 seconds on the recently resurfaced 4-mile, 14-turn road course.

His 34th and final lap time pipped Sebastien Bourdais, who registered a best lap of 1:48.187 in the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R. Bourdais and teammate Renger van der Zande topped the time sheet in the morning session (1:49.538), with the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R second (1:49.592).

Derani and Sims enter the 2-hour, 40-minute race atop the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP standings. Cadillac leads the Manufacturer Championship standings.

Cadillac Racing posted eight podium finishes at Road America in the DPi era, including victory in 2021 (Derani, Felipe Nasr).

Bourdais and van der Zande earned a podium result at Road America in 2022 – one place behind the runner-up finish of the sister Cadillac DPi-V.R driven by Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn. Van der Zande has also driven to third place in 2021 and second in 2020 in the Cadillac DPi-V.R at Road America.. Source: Cadillac Racing.

📷 © Courtesy of IMSA. #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R.

Pipo Derani following the second practice in which he posted the quickest lap: ““It was a positive day for all of us at Cadillac Racing. A better order in the second practice, I would say. Jokes aside, it's not only being quick in practice 1 and expecting to be quick in practice 2. You have to keep working on it, trying different things to find a little bit here and a little bit there. It was a good start but obviously the competition is very stiff and strong. It's a long track and a small mistake going really quick can cost you a couple of tenths (of a second) and a position. Trying to put everything together is not easy and that's why we're trying to have a car that's good and easier to achieve the desired lap times. At the end of the day it's competition whether it's' practice or qualifying. You always want to be the quickest. Practice is very tight and we shouldn't expect anything different in qualifying., which means that every detail is going to count." Source: Cadillac Racing

📷 © Courtesy of IMSA. . #01 Cadillac V-Series.R

Sebastien Bourdais following the first practice in which he posted the quickest lap: "It's just a very different from the Road America from what we knew. I think it will get better after time. On the INDYCAR weekend it must have been really exciting because basically nothing had run before, and even now after INDYCAR, after NASCAR and testing it's still surprising when you go down the inside. I think it's going to be tricky in traffic. There is a high amount of grip on the line and on the inside and in the braking zones it's low. We'll sort it out. Overall, I think we learned things at the Indy road course that helped us figure out a few things and we're on the right path with the 01 Cadillac." Source: Cadillac Racing.

Corvette Racing tops GTD PRO Friday practices.

📷 © Courtesy of IMSA. #3 Corvette C8.R GTD.

Jordan Taylor with #3 Corvette C8.R GTD topped both GTD classes being the only one under 2:04 seconds in a lap (2:03.712).

The Corvette Racing duo of Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor are hoping for a return to its winning ways in the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.

The pairing won last month in class at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park – the first victory of 2023. A second win this season would go along nicely with a 2020 triumph at Road America in the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class. With only four races to go, victories are what will help the Garcia/Taylor tandem and the No. 3 C8.R team most in the hunt for the GTD PRO title.

Although they finished fourth two weeks ago at Lime Rock Park, the result was enough to move into second in class championship standings – 151 points from the leaders with 1,500 points still available with four races left. However, pole positions and race wins are the most immediate goals for Garcia and Taylor with points taking care of themselves after that.

To get back on the top step of the class podium, Corvette Racing will need to come to grips – literally – with a recently repaved Road America surface. In years past, Road America was notorious for eating up tires with high levels of degradation. That very likely won’t be the case this year with substantially more grip available to the field of 46 cars. Source: Corvette Racing.

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R: “We don’t really know what to expect at Road America. It’s a kind of track where you can run a completely different configuration that is completely opposite than the rest. So maybe there’s more room to play with setup in order to go completely against everyone else. At most other IMSA tracks, everybody is kind of running the same full-downforce, full-everything. At Road America, there’s a little bit more play. I don’t know how the new surface will affect things. Tire degradation used to be very big there, but I anticipate the tire deg to not be as big as such a big thing there this year. Let’s see. We are definitely knocking on the door every single race.”

JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R: “Road America is great and has given me a lot of good memories. One of my first wins with the C8.R was there in a downpour late in the race. It wasn’t necessarily our strongest track last year, so hopefully with the new repave we can make some gains on everyone else. We’ve done some simulation work to perfect what we can do on our side to get as much performance out of the car as possible. From this point, it’s all about going for race wins." Source: Corvette Racing.

The live USA Network telecast and Peacock streaming of the race starts at 11 a.m. ET Sunday, Aug. 6. Outside the U.S., streaming will be available at IMSA.com/TVLive. IMSA Radio at IMSA.com, RadioLeMans.com plus SiriusXM live (XM 207, Web/App 992) broadcast of the race also starts at 11 a.m.