DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—The 2017 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship Roar Before the Rolex 24 concluded Sunday afternoon after three very varied days of high-speed testing at Daytona International Speedway.
The three-day event started Friday, a gorgeous Florida winter day, warm and sunny and perfect for watching racing—and for teams to prepare their cars for the upcoming Rolex 24 at Daytona, just a few weeks away.
Saturday was a different day entirely, with rain giving way to what is, for Florida, severe cold, made worse by the wind. Half the teams opted not to run the morning session, preferring to preserve their cars from possibly damaging off-track excursion, and instead focused on refining their dry-weather set-ups.
The afternoon session duplicated what might be night-tome conditions at the Rolex—cold track and tires led to some interesting behavior under braking.
Sunday dawned cloudy and cold—just above freezing, in fact—with neither rain nor warmth predicted.
The weather stayed as expected. What wasn’t expected was that Dragonspeed’s Ben Hanley would dethrone Rebellion’s Neel Jani as the fastest man on the track.
Hanley lapped the 3.56-mile track in 1:38.343 at 130.3 mph, just two-hundredths of a second quicker than Jonathan Bomarito in the #55 Mazda RT24-Z.
Stephane Sarrazin managed to keep the Rebellion third with a lap of 1:38.568, two-tenths slower than the Mazda.
Toyota LMP1 driver Michael Conway was fifth overall and quickest of the DPis in the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi V.R. with a lap of 1:39.209 at 129.1 mph, 0.866 seconds off the pace of the leader. Ricky Taylor was eight, second fastest of the DPis, in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac, 1.2 seconds back.
