Palou takes Cadillac back atop the Roar under the lights at Daytona

Renger van der Zande kept the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R at the top of the time sheet in the fifth and final test session of the Roar Before the 24 until he was bumped out of the top spot…by his teammate. Alex Palou ended up with the best time of the night in the Chip Ganassi Racing car, turning a 1m35.705s lap. For those keeping score at home, that’s Cadillac setting the best time in three sessions (the other two were the No. 31 Whelen Engineering V-Series.R) and Porsche two.

While BMW and Acura never set the fast time in a session, BMW can at least claim one unique honor – the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 was in the top three every session courtesy of Connor De Phillippi. In this nighttime run, De Phillippi was 0.277s off Palou’s best, in second. Kevin Estre was third quickest in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 at 1m35.984s despite the car losing a wheel early in the session, with Filipe Albuquerque in fourth to make it all four manufacturers in the top four. Jack Aitken completed the top five in the No. 31 Cadillac, which went to the garage after only a couple of laps due to a broken suspension, but emerged in enough time to knock out 22 laps.

The Roar’s night session is often critical because it’s a good opportunity for teams to figure out how their cars will change as temperatures drop during after sundown. However, this evening’s session was about 10 degrees F cooler than the overnight low is expected to be next Sunday morning — 55 degrees F.

“Today was kind of an outlier when you look at the forecast, what’s in store for us for the race, so with the temperature the car changes,” said Tom Blomqvist, driver of the No. 31 with Aitken and Pipo Derani. “We went through our paces, the normal progression of preparations, and [were] not really chasing anything. Qualifying is important and the car is in a good spot; it’s working well. I believe we’re in position to fight for the pole. That is the mini target for now until we get to the main prize next week.”

Scott Huffaker set the best time in LMP2 with a 1m38.270s lap in the No. 20 MDK by High Class Racing ORECA, followed by Matthieu Vaxiviere in the No. 88 AF Corse ORECA at 1m38.664s. Charles Milesi was only 0.01s off in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA. The No. 74 Riley Motorsports (Felipe Fraga) and No. 22 United Autosports USA (Felix Rosenqvist) ORECAs rounded out the top five.