BMW edges ahead in second Roar session at Daytona

BMW Team RLL led the way in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s second Roar Before The 24 session at Daytona, eclipsing Meyer Shank Racing’s morning lead by just over 0.4s.

Dries Vanthoor set the best time in the No. 24 M Hybrid V8, a 1m35.424s, half a second quicker than Tom Blomqvist’s earlier benchmark hot lap for Acura MSR.

“It’s good to know that it’s looking good at this early stage. We believe we have taken steps since last year,” Vanthoor said. “We’ve done a lot of testing and there’s a lot of hard work going on. We will see next week if it pays off.

“The first session, the track was quite dirty; grip wasn’t the highest. We will really feel the grip building up closer to the race next week.”

Acura MSR’s No. 93 ARX-06 wasn’t far off on this occasion, with a 1m35.619s from former RLL driver Nick Yelolly putting the team within 0.2s.

On the heels of completing just five laps in the morning session due to a “minor IT issue,” the second bout of track time proved far more productive for Lamborghini’s SC63. The car ended up completing 46 tours of the circuit and slotting in third with a 1m36.041s from Romain Grosjean.

The No. 25 RLL BMW took fourth, with the No. 60 Acura MSR ARX-06 fifth.

Elsewhere in the top class, it was a tough outing for the No. 7 Porsche Penske 963. Felipe Nasr pulled off the circuit on the run to the Bus Stop after the car’s high-voltage alarm went off.

Per regulation, Nasr jumped out and the car was recovered to the Isolation Zone before being returned to the team. It didn’t return to the track.

TDS Racing’s ORECA led the way in LMP2, with a 1m39.047s from Peugeot Hypercar driver Mikkel Jensen. It was tight at the top as the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA ended up second with a lap just 0.083 off. It wasn’t all plain sailing though for the Polish team, as it caused a red flag late on after stopping on track with Bijoy Garg at the wheel.

The No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR that topped Friday’s first session finished the day third. The team’s 1m38.673s from the morning was the fastest P2 time of the day.

In GTD, the top two spots were occupied by Pro cars, with Laurin Heinrich in the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche setting a 1m47.775s to go fastest. The Pfaff Lamborghini claimed second, while the No. 32 Korthoff Competition Mercedes set the pace in GTD with the third-fastest time (1m48.237s) in the combined rankings.

Testing continues Saturday for the WeatherTech teams at 11:15 am.