The 90-minute session began in dry conditions with an early Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 1-2, before Braun took the top spot in Meyer Shank Racing’s Daytona 24 Hours-winning ARX-06 with a lap of 1m33.563s.
Felipe Nasr was second quickest for the Porsche factory team in the #5 car, 1.2s off the pace but a tenth clear of Nick Tandy in the sister #6 entry.
Rain started to fall just before the one-third point of the session, sending the majority of the field into the pits. With more showers forecast across this weekend, there was plenty of scope for rain running among the bumper 57-car field.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Renger van der Zande just managed to squeeze in a time of 1m35.181s before the rain, ahead of the similar Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Jack Aitken.
The BMW M Hybrid V8s of Philipp Eng and Connor De Phillippi were next up but 2s off the pace.
The second Acura of Ricky Taylor (Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport) didn’t get a representative lap time in before the rain, and was classified 11th overall, with Mike Rockenfeller down in 15th in the final GTP entry, the JDC/Miller MotorSports Porsche.
Steven Thomas led the way in LMP2 for TDS Racing, half a second clear of Christian Rasmussen (Era Motorsport) and Ed Jones (High Class Racing).
IndyCar racer Devlin DeFrancesco suffered a quick spin in his Rick Ware Racing entry, but a far bigger crash befell John Falb, who shunted his #35 TDS car at Turn 6 that caused severe damage to its right-front corner and caused a red flag for recovery and barrier repairs.
Garett Grist (Jr III Racing) led the LMP3 field, just ahead of Gar Robinson’s Riley-run car.
BMW sets GTD pace, ahead of Porsche and Ferrari
In GTD, Bryan Sellers was the early pacesetter in Paul Miller Racing’s BMW M4, despite being given a drive-through penalty for repeated track limits infractions.
He lapped 0.066s ahead of Kay van Berlo in the #91 Kellymoss with Riley Porsche 911, who was on the right side of the same tenth as Pro class leader Davide Rigon (Risi Competitzione Ferrari 296) and Andy Lally (Magnus Racing Aston Martin Vantage).
The session ended when Luke Berkeley crashed the #42 Lamborghini in the closing seconds causing a second red flag.
Practice 2 starts at 8am ET tomorrow.
IMSA Watkins Glen – first practice results:
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