IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge teams braved 40 degree temperatures for their opening session of the Roar Before the 24 on Friday. For the vast majority of the session, Multimatic Motorsports was on top with their Ford Mustang GT4s. However, with four minutes remaining, Rennsport One’s Spencer Pumpelly turned in a lap of 116.066 seconds (110.420 mph) to top the chart in a Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport MR.
Pumpelly’s lap was a quarter of a tenth of a second faster than Austin Cindric in the No. 22 Mustang for Multimatic Motorsports. The 19-year old has not lost anything from his time in NASCAR. Teammate Scott Maxwell was third quickest in the No. 15 Mustang.
TeamTGM’s Guy Cosmo was fourth fastest in the No. 4 Porsche. It should be noted that while the team plans on racing two Mercedes-AMG GT4s this season, they haven’t taken delivery of the second one as of yet. The first of their Mercedes-AMG GT4s will be the No. 46. Stevan McAleer was fifth quickest in the Bodymotion Racing Porsche.
Of the new cars, GMG Racing’s Daren Jorgensen was the quickest driver in the new Audi R8 LMS GT4. His lap of 106.644 seconds (109.873 mph) was nearly six-tenths of a second off of Pumpelly, but still good enough for sixth quickest.
In TCR, only four of the seven cars entered set times during the session. C360R’s Audi RS 3 LMS Club Sports ended up one-two on the chart with Pierre Kleinubing fastest in the No. 75. Kleinubing’s lap of 120.292 seconds (106.541 mph) was good enough for 17th overall, nearly 1.7 seconds faster than teammate Rodrigo Sales in the No. 74 Audi. Tanner Rumburg in the Rumcastle LLC Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR was third quickest.
Street Tuner saw MINI JCW Team’s Derek Jones topped the chart with a lap of 125.400 seconds (102.201 mph). That was nearly a second and a quarter than the Porsche Cayman of Tim Probert. Bodymotion Racing’s Mike Bavaro was third fastest.
Speed-wise, Pumpelly’s best lap of the session is three-tenths of a second slower than Dean Martin‘s pole time for last year’s BMW Endurance Challenge at Daytona. Jones’ quickest lap in ST is exactly a half-second slower than the time Connor Bloum set to win the ST pole for Rennsport One.
29 of the 40 teams that are on-site in Daytona set times during the session. A number of those teams that chose to sit out have brand new cars, like Murillo Racing. Both of their new cars (a Mercedes-AMG GT4 in Grand Sport and an Audi RS 3 LMS Club Sport in TCR) elected to sit out.
Results of IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Roar Before the 24 Session No. 1
CTSC teams have one more session on Friday that will begin at 2:15 p.m. It will be a one-hour session.
About the author
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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