Hard rain made practice for the American Le Mans Series at Long Beach event exceedingly difficult, and practice times in no way indicate the actual performance of the cars.
Rain is forecast for qualifying but race day should be dry, meaning teams will be guessing at setups and tire compounds.
The session was red-flagged twice—once for water—eight inches deep at some places on the track—and a once when Tim Pappas in the #54 Black Swan P2 Lola-HPD lost the rear end and hit the wall at Turn 1.
Lucas Luhr was fastest in the session in the #6 P1 Muscle Milk Pickett Racing HPD ARX-03a with a lap of 1:33.121. Last year this team qualified second with a lap of 1:14.453.
Kyle Marcelli was second quickest in a #8 PC Merchant Services Oreca FLM09 with a lap of 1:33.648, only half-a-second off the P1 pace. The PC pole in 2011 was 1:17.736.
Conquest, which just switched to Nissan power for its #37 P2 Morgan for Long Beach, was third; driver Martin Plowman turned a lap at 1:33.875. There was no P2 qualifying time from 2011 or 2010; the 2009 P2 pole time was 1:13.134.
In GT, the #17 Tire Porsche was unsurprisingly fastest. Wolf Henzler has proved to be an excellent driver in the wet, and Falken has the best rain tire on the grids. Hezler lapped at 1:33.964, again nearly P1 time. The 2011 GT pole was 1:19.090.
Grand Am regular Michael Valiante turned in the fastest time in GTC, with a lap of 1:40.020 in the #11 JDX Porsche GT# Cup car. The 2011 GTC pole was 1:23.853.
Qualifying for the Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series At Long Beach starts at 8 p.m. EDT Friday April 13. The session will be streamed live on ESPN3 and Live Timing and Scoring is available on the alms.com website.
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