Rebellion Racing continued to set the pace at the Roar Before the Rolex 24 with Neel Jani leading the way for the Swiss team.
The Porsche LMP1 driver became the first driver to break the 1m 39s barrier at the pre-season test, turning in a 1:38.944s marker during the night-time session on Saturday.
Jani, driving the Rebellion Racing ORECA 07, also topped the timesheets on Friday.
The current World Endurance Champion will share the car with Sebastien Buemi, Nick Heidfeld and Stephane Sarrazin at the opening round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship on January 28-29.
Roar Before the 24 Session 3 Results
Roar Before the 24 Session 4 Results
Roar Before the 24 Session 5 Results
Saturday’s trio of practice sessions were disjointed by bad weather: only 32 out of 55 entries took the track during the morning run which was affected by heavy rain.
Conditions improved in time for the afternoon session, which Jani topped with a 1:39.017s effort, before he sheared down his personal best under the cover of darkness.
Second quickest on the day (and overall) was Tristan Nunez in the #55 Mazda DPi. Following an overnight suspension change, the Mazdas picked up the pace and Nunez was able to get to within 0.213 seconds of Jani’s overall benchmark.
Third fastest was British driver Ben Hanley, driving the DragonSpeed-entered ORECA 07. Hanley’s time of 1:39.315s set during the fourth session was enough to pitch the American squad above the JDC Miller Motorsports ORECA 07 in the table.
Completing the top five so far is the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi.
In GT Le Mans, Scott Dixon set the new fastest lap of the test with a 1:44.558s effort aboard the #67 Ford GT.
Dixon’s time set during session four put the Chip Ganassi-run blue oval ahead of Jan Magnussen’s Corvette C7.R which had topped the order since session one.
Second quickest on Saturday and fourth quickest since the start of the Roar was Andy Priaulx in the #69 Ford, with Dirk Mueller’s time from yesterday keeping the #66 car third overall.
Patricio O’Ward rallied to give Performance Tech Motorsports the fastest lap of the Prototype Challenge category on day two, although his 1:43.119s marker was not enough to eclipse the best time of the weekend so far set by BAR1 Motorsports’ Nick Boulle (1:42.701s).
In GT Daytona, Christopher Mies led the way in the Montaplast-by Land Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3.
Two more sessions are bookmarked for Sunday, January 8 as the Roar Before the 24 reaches its conclusion.
