Thursday at the 24 Hours of Daytona has ended with a Cadillac best time – However, the practices were not very informative
Rain thwarted the first two free practice sessions at the 2022 24 Hours of Daytona. Only a brief dry spell at the start of the second free practice session produced some meaningful times. Fastest car in both practices was the Action Express Cadillac 48 (Rockenfeller/Kobayashi/Johnson/Lopez), but the story of the day was Patricio “Pato” O’Ward.
The IndyCar star really let it fly in the first practice session and set the fastest time – in an LMP2 car! (Results 24h Daytona 2022) The class has not been at the performance level of the DPi category since 2019. But the wet track cancelled out the technical disadvantage and OWard had the best time recorded for the 81 Dragonspeed Oreca (Lux/DeFrancesco/O’Ward/Herta) in 1:49.251 minutes.
At the beginning of the second practice it was dry. But not all teams took advantage of these conditions, so that the times were sometimes far apart. Kamui Kobayashi set the fastest time of the first two sessions with 1:35.470 minutes. For comparison, the best times in the DPi class were in the 1:34 range even after qualifying.
The track had not yet really built up grip again when it started to rain again. On an only slightly damp track (too wet for slicks, too dry for rain tyres) Trenton Estep in the 7 Forty7 Duqueine (Kvamme/McCusker/Estep/Doquin) had an accident, causing an interruption. When it started again, the track was completely wet until the end.
The conditions also ensured that 13 GTD cars finished ahead of the fastest in GTD Pro. The GT3 fastest time was set by Mikael Grenier in the 57 Winward Mercedes (Ward/Ellis/Grenier/Auer) in 1:46.577.
Due to the weather, there was little driving activity: in the first practice 47, in the second 51 of the 61 cars went for a fast lap. Several cars even failed to set a time in both sessions. The race will be dry but cold – the exact opposite of the warm and humid conditions on Thursday.
There is still a night practice from 11:15 to 3:00 a.m. on the programme before there is another practice on Friday. The weather forecast predicts improvement. The starting grid for the race has already been determined during the qualifying race.
