Productive Practice Identify Early Sahlen’s Six Hours Of The Glen Contenders

Story By: IMSA – WATKINS GLEN, NY – On a day when weather conditions were expected to create havoc at Watkins Glen International, the stormy weather stayed away and only a few sprinkles were felt at times throughout the day on Friday.

As a result, all IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams got in two productive practice sessions, and a few early favorites for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen have emerged. In the Prototype class, those favorites are the pair of Nissan DPi entries from Tequila Patrón ESM, which swept the top two spots on Friday’s combined time chart.

Leading the way was Brazilian driver Pipo Derani in the No. 2 Tequila Patrón entry he is sharing this weekend with Scott Sharp and Ryan Dalziel. Derani logged a best time of 1 minute, 34.696 seconds (129.2 mph) in the day’s second practice session.

“The second half of the season starts now,” said Derani. “This program started late and it was normal for us to have a few problems at the beginning of the year. Now with so much hard work put in by the team it’s time for us to get better and better.

“Hopefully the reliability problems we had at the beginning of the year are gone. It’s still a very young program, but with that behind us we can start working more on performance, which with this weekend seems good so far.”

Second quickest was Derani’s teammate, Bruno Senna in the No. 22 Nissan DPi with a best time of 1:35.293 (128.4 mph). Senna will co-drive the No. 22 entry with Johannes van Overbeek.

Olivier Pla was third quickest in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LM P2 car at 1:35.377 (128.3 mph), followed by points leader Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R at 1:35.402 (128.2 mph). Brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor head into Sunday’s race looking for their sixth consecutive victory.

In the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class, Dirk Mueller was quickest of the day in the No. 66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT, turning in a best lap of 1:43.078 (118.7 mph) in the morning practice session. Teammate Joey Hand was quickest in the afternoon session at 1:43.115 (118.6 mph), also in the No. 66 machine.

“I like the track, Dirk likes the track,” Hand said. “(Mueller) was quickest in the morning session. It’s one of those places where you drive through the tunnel here and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I get to drive this place again.’ It’s one of those feelings.

“I say it all the time, but these guys have been really good at getting the car to come out of the trailer quick, from homework, from all of the stuff they do at the shop, from last year’s information to this. They’ve just been really good at getting them out of the truck fast and that goes a long way through the weekend.”

Following the No. 66 co-drivers on the time chart was Richard Westbrook in the No. 67 Ford GT with a time of 1:43.226 (118.5 mph). Westbrook and co-driver Ryan Briscoe won last year’s GTLM race at Watkins Glen.

In the GT Daytona (GTD) class, Katherine Legge led the way in the No. 93 Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura NSX GT3 with a best lap of 1:45.528 (116.0 mph). Legge and co-driver Andy Lally are carrying the momentum of the first victory for the Acura NSX GT3 program earlier this month in the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic in Detroit.

“Hopefully, we’re going off of some forward momentum from Detroit,” Legge said. “The car feels really good. I don’t know where we legit end up, because that was a new tires, no traffic run. Hopefully, we have a really good race car.

“Wherever it is, I think we’re in the ballpark, which is nice and it rolled off the truck like that. We worked really hard, we went to VIR since Detroit and we’ve done more testing, so we’ll just keep pushing, keep digging and keep moving forward. I think it will be a lot closer in the race, because, of course, everybody’s on a different strategy.”

In the Prototype Challenge (PC) class, Patricio O’Ward led the way with a best lap of 1:39.347 (123.2 mph) in the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA FLM09. O’Ward and co-driver James French have won all four PC races contested thus far in 2017.

Patrón ESM Team Forges on Without Brown – At the beginning of this week, the Tequila Patrón ESM team announced that the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen would be the final Prototype race as a driver for Ed Brown, as the president and CEO of Tequila Patrón elected to step out of the cockpit for business reasons.

On Thursday, however, the team announced that Brown would not be able to compete in this weekend’s race, as he underwent minor but unexpected back surgery. As a result, the No. 22 Tequila Patrón Nissan DPi will be shared in the race – which marks the halfway point of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season – by Brown’s longtime co-driver, Johannes van Overbeek, and Bruno Senna.

“He was at least looking forward to finishing off his career here at Watkins Glen but had a bit of a back scare, which unfortunately forced him out,” said van Overbeek. “We’ll have to carry on without. It still doesn’t change our objective of trying to win the race for him. It’s Bruno and I for this six-hour race. It’ll be a lot of work, but we’re up for it and we’ll see what happens.”

Van Overbeek, along with Tequila Patrón ESM team owner and No. 2 Nissan DPi driver Scott Sharp and Brazilian racer Pipo Derani visited the Watkins Glen International media center to provide an update on the team’s immediate plans for the weekend and moving forward throughout the remainder of the season. This weekend, Derani is sharing the No. 2 entry with Sharp and Ryan Dalziel.

Beginning with next week’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Derani and van Overbeek will co-drive the No. 22 machine for the remainder of the season. Derani helped the team win both the Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida in 2016, and had a part-time schedule including Tequila Patrón Endurance Cup races in the WeatherTech Championship with the ESM team and a handful of FIA World Endurance Championship races with Ford Chip Ganassi Racing planned for this year before this week’s unexpected developments.

“It’s going to be great,” Derani said. “Johannes and I, we shared the car last year at Daytona and Sebring and in Endurance Cup races and it was a pleasure to have him in the car. He’s a guy that’s very precise with his comments, his inputs and it’s very, very nice to work with him. To be able to now finish the season, just the two of us for the shorter races, it’s going to be something very nice, which starts next week. I can’t wait to get started.”

The new Nissan DPi program has seen its ups and downs through the first half of the season, but a clear highlight was the No. 2 team’s runner-up result in the BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach in April with Dalziel and Sharp sharing the ride. However, the team is encouraged by its progress as it continues to develop the car.

“We were signing our deal when Cadillac was hitting the track (last fall), so we sort of knew we were behind,” Sharp explained. “It just has hung with us a little bit longer than we’d hoped, but we’ve gotten through a lot of issues. There are flashes, definitely, of potential in the car, both the car itself and the engine. The combination, when it all comes together, will be super competitive. It’s just, we’re still finishing some development getting there.”

It looked like anything but a development program on Friday at Watkins Glen as the team went 1-2 on the time charts with Derani leading in the No. 2 and Bruno Senna second in No. 22.