Albuquerque beat BMW’s Philipp Eng and Mathieu Jaminet (Porsche Penske Motorsport 963) in the 90-minute opening practice session for the fourth round of the series.
Eng set the pace early in the session in his #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 with a lap of 1m14.453s, before Albuquerque’s #10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 just beat that with 1m14.434s.
“I felt really good, I felt really connected with the car,” said Albuquerque. “The new asphalt has changed this track completely, in a very positive way.”
Aitken had just taken P2 at the time, 0.28s off the pace in the #31 Action Express-run Cadillac V-Series.R, when he crashed heavily into the tirewall at Turn 4, recording a 50g impact according to IMSA radio.
Louis Deletraz was fourth quickest in sister #40 Acura to the pacesetter, ahead of Aitken and Nick Yelloly (#25 BMW).
The second Caddy, the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing-run example, was stranded in the garage for much of the early running with a water leak. The car ended up seventh in Sebastien Bourdais’ hands.
Felipe Nasr was eighth in the #7 PPM Porsche from the customer 963s of Richard Westbrook (JDC-Miller) and Gianmaria Bruni (Proton).
Porsche pips Corvette in GTD
In GTD, Antonio Garcia led the early going in his #3 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with a lap of 1m24.099s.
Seb Priaulx’s AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R beat that in the closing moments by 0.193s with a fastest time of 1m24.299s.
Nicky Catsburg was third in the second Corvette, while Philip Ellis led the pro-am GTD class in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes.
Practice two starts at 12:15pm ET on Saturday before qualifying at 7:35pm ET.
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