CONTINENTAL TIRE MONTEREY GRAND PRIX: Friday Photos and Notes

A very busy day here at Laguna Seca for the Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix Powered by Mazda.  Two practices for the Tudor Championship classes, and two for each of the supporting series: Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo, Mazda MX-5 Cup – who also threw in a Qualifying session, and the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge – which also had their Qualifying today.  There were cars on track literally from 8am this morning until the final cars rolled off track at 6:20 this evening.  That’s a good full day of action!

The No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Honda HPD Ligier JS P2 with drivers John Pew and Oswaldo Negri, Jr., topped the field in both of practice sessions today for the Tudor Championship. The lap of 1:19.028 minutes with an average speed of 101.949 mph took place in the afternoon practice session.

The No. 11 RSR Racing AutoMaxUSA Oreca FLM09 with drivers Bruno Junqueira and Chris Cumming led both sessions in the Prototype Challenge class, setting the best time of the day in the afternoon session with a lap of 1:21.046 minutes with an average speed of 99.410 mph.

In GT Le Mans, the No. 912 Porsche North America Porsche 911 RSR of Jorg Bergmeister and Michael Christensen set fast lap, again in the second session. The lap of 1:23.217 minutes at 96.817 mph was 0.645-of-a-second quicker than the first session’s quick lap run by the No. 25 BMW Team RLL IHG Rewards Club BMW Z4 GTE of drivers Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner.

The quickest lap in GT Daytona was run in the early session by the No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Park Place Porsche 911 GT America at 1:27.194 minutes at 92.401 with drivers Patrick Lindsey and Spencer Pumpelly.

Qualifying for Round 4 of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship is scheduled for Saturday, May 2, beginning at 4:15 p.m. Pacific Time.

Here are some of my favorite photos from Friday:

More to come Saturday Night!