Palou keeps Cadillac ahead in second Rolex 24 practice

Alex Palou scored the quickest lap in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R from Chip Ganassi Racing, keeping the team on top for consecutive sessions in practice for the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Palou’s 1m35.589s was almost half a second quicker than Scott Dixon’s pace-setting time in the car this morning.

“It’s been a good day so far for us for the 01 car,” said Palou, who will be competing in his second Rolex 24. “I believe we were fastest this morning with Dixon in in the car and also with Seb [Bourdais], then this afternoon with Renger [van de Zande] and I, so pretty cool. Lots of learnings. Every time you go out on track, it’s very different with conditions, traffic and so on. I’m just learning as much as possible from the traffic and also from the car trying to get the most we can for for the race.”

Felipe Nasr set the second-quickest time of 1m35.724s in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, 0.03s ahead of the Proton Competition 963 in the hands of Gianmaria Bruni. Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing V-Series.R and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 PPM 963 completed the top five, pushing BMW out of the top five for the first session of the Roar and Rolex weekends combined.

The two Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acuras continue to struggle, the No. 10 managing only an eight-quickest time, and the No. 40 once again more than a second off the GTP field’s best time.

Clement Novalak had the top time in LMP2 with the No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA at 1m39.416s, but No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR driver Toby Sowery’s time this morning was quicker to hold the fastest time of the day so far.

“Setting the fastest lap, it’s easy to get carried away and think that you’re the best out there, but there’s so much more to endurance racing,” said Sowery, who will run his first 24-hour race. “The expectation from APR and CrowdStrike is to win this event. Every event that we attend we come to win so setting that is is always a milestone. But come Saturday a lot of things can go wrong, so it’s about putting a lot of those laps in and keeping the car in one piece.”