BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde was fastest in the second free practice session as part of the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s 12 Hours of Sebring.
The South African completed a 1:47.884 in the #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 to put the Rahal Letterman Lanigan names at the top.
FP2 ran far smoother in comparison to the heavily disrupted FP1 session.
As a result, teams made the most of a productive 90 minutes to gain data and make their set-up adjustments for the race on Saturday 15 March.
Despite Mathieu Jaminet’s limited running in the #6 Porsche Penske 963 GTP during FP1, the #6 joined the #7 Porsche on looking strong as a team on pace.
#60 Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06 GTP driver Tom Blomqvist held the top spot for most of the session until S. van der Linde surpassed Blomqvist in the final 15 minutes.
With marginally under five minutes remaining, race control called a red flag when Brendon Iribe’s #70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 endured an impact at Turn 13, possibly involving the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth who simultaneously registered as stopped on the timing screen.
So Blomqvist took second position in the end with a quickest lap time of 1:47.998 in front of the fastest of the Porsches, the #6, and Matt Campbell’s 1:48.850.
Felipe Nasr’s 1:48.921 set the #6 Porsche in fourth position as Dries Vanthoor rounded out the top-five with a 1:49.024 in the #24 RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 GTP.
TDS Racing tops LMP2, ‘Rexy’ quickest GT car
In the LMP2 category, Steven Thomas was fastest for the #11 TDS Racing Oreca 07 team after he completed a swift lap time of 1:50.961.
Era Motorsport’s Kaku Ohta put the #18 Oreca in second place after a 1:51.151 lap time, followed in third by Dane Cameron’s #99 AO Racing Oreca and his 1:51.296.
Ben Hanley finished fourth in the #2 United Autosports USA Oreca (1:51.386) as #88 AF Corse Oreca driver Nicklas Nielsen took fifth place with a 1:51.566.
In the combined GT classification, reigning GTD Pro champions AO Racing and their #77 Porsche 911 GT3.R was quickest owing to Laurin Heinrich’s 1:59.898.
Korthoff Competition took second with their #32 Mercedes-AMG GT3 but were fastest in the GTD category after Kenton Koch set a 2:00.300 lap time.
Mike Skeen put the #021 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari in third place after his 2:00.520 as the Inception Ferrari (#70) followed in fourth position with Ollie Millroy’s 2:00.954.
Elliott Skeer set an exact lap time of 2:01.000 in the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche to finish fifth in the combined GT classification.
See here for the full FP2 classification. The third and final free practice session will start at 19:45 local or 23:45 UTC.
