Vanthoor moves Porsche ahead as sun sets over Daytona

Saturday’s IMSA testing action at Daytona came to a close with the teams’ first bout of night running under the floodlights.

After BMW Team RLL paced GTP during the day, it was Porsche’s turn to top a session come nightfall. Laurens Vanthoor completed a 1m36.498s to put the 2024 title-winning No. 7 963 in the prime position on the leaderboard.

The time wasn’t quite quick enough to better his brother Dries’ 1m35.424s hot lap from Friday in the No. 24 M Hybrid V8, the fastest lap of the Roar Before The 24 so far. And with weather forecasts for Sunday’s track action predicting rain, that time looks likely to be the fastest time of the entire weekend.

BMW ended up slotting in second and third in the standings, with the No. 24 0.4s quicker than the No. 25. Philipp Eng was the quickest driver from the team with a 1m36.498s.

LMP2 saw Antonio Felix Da Costa lead the charge for Inter Europol Competition. The Le Mans-winning Polish team, which is competing on its own in IMSA this year, would end the night 0.3s up on the field with a 1m39.618s.

The No. 11 TDS and No. 73 Pratt Miller examples completed the top three.

Further down the list in LMP2, the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA brought out a red flag toward the end of the night running after Tobias Lutke had an off at Turn 3.

It was all Porsche in GTD, with the top four spaces in the combined rankings all filled by 911 GT3 R 992s. Thomas Preining’s 1m48.034s put the No. 20 Proton example atop the timing screens.

Wright’s Porsche slotted in second and was quickest in GTD with a 1m48.140s. AO’s “Rexy” Porsche ended up third and the Iron Dames took fourth.

Best of the rest was AWA’s Corvette, which was third fastest in GTD. It was incredibly tight, with all but five of the 36 GTD and GTD Pro cars that set times all lapping in the 1m48s.

The penultimate session of the 2025 Roar is set to go green at 9:45 a.m. local time.

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