Ozz Negri and the Michael Shank Racing team set the early pace at Belle Isle as the opening practice for the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship has been and went.
Locking in a 1:26.475 late into the 90 minute practice session, Negri put his Riley-Ford EcoBoost Prototype onto top spot by the slimmest of margins – just 0.081 seconds ahead of Christian Fittipaldi in the Action Express Racing Corvette DP.
In a sign that the BoP has probably gone the wrong way since a Laguna Seca race which saw a P2 take a win, the top four positions were filled by DPs with Memo Rojas taking third and Jordan Taylor taking fourth. The closest P2 was Ryan Dalziel in the #1 ESM HPD who was fifth and a whopping 0.581 seconds behind Negri.
Unfortunately, the SpeedSource Mazda SkyActiv-D P2s may have a struggle on their hands coming into this race – the #07 driven by Joel Miller was slower than the two leading GT Daytona (GTD) cars.
Those two GTD cars were the TRG-AMR Vantage of Indy 500 driver James Davison who set a 1:33.720 and the Flying Lizard Audi of Spencer Pumpelly – who was only 0.044 seconds behind the Australian.
Dempsey Racing was third with Andrew Davis setting a 1:34.345 in the Porsche 911 GT America.
