Porsche Penske Motorsport is throwing everything it has at the driver and manufacturer titles in the Grand Touring Prototype class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway saw the German manufacturer take command right away during the opening 90-minute practice for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks weekend.
Kevin Estre put the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 at the very top of the timing screens. He toured the 2.439-mile IMS road course in 1 minute, 15.764 seconds, good for an average speed of 115.891 miles per hour. Behind him, Tom Blomqvist slotted the No. 60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06 into second place, sitting 0.089 of a second in arrears. Sheldon van der Linde put the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 third, while Felipe Nasr made it two factory Porsches in the top four by steering the No. 7 entry to a 1:16.147 lap at an average of 115.308 mph.
Porsche Penske has juggled its GTP driver pairings for Indianapolis specifically to boost the championship odds of Laurin Heinrich. Heinrich arrives at the penultimate round as the highest-ranked Porsche driver in the point standings, though he faces a 118-point deficit to Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R. Heinrich originally planned for a three-race IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup campaign in the No. 7 Porsche alongside Nasr and Julien Andlauer—a trio that won both the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. Additional outings in the No. 5 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 yielded a win at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with Tijmen van der Helm, briefly pushing Heinrich to the top of the standings. This weekend, Heinrich shares the No. 6 factory machine with Estre before returning to the No. 7 for the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Estre arrives under scrutiny following a collision with Aitken in the closing stages of the previous round at Road America. IMSA slapped the Frenchman with a two-phase, two-race probation after a post-race review of the clash between Cars 6 and 31. But Estre insisted Friday that the penalty changes nothing about his approach. "I will do what I always do, which is trying to drive as fast as I can," Estre said. "And if I can overtake, I will overtake. I think my mindset is quite clear."
Points leader Aitken and co-driver Earl Bamber—who won at Indy last year alongside Frederik Vesti—slotted in sixth fastest in the No. 31 Cadillac after clocking a best lap of 1:16.216 at 115.287 mph, ending the session 0.452 of a second off the leading Porsche. "Of course, Laurin is second in the championship, so we will look at what he’s doing," Aitken noted. "But there are three Porsches out there and they’ve all been running well this year at various times."
Meanwhile, the support classes saw plenty of early movement. Tom Dillmann topped Le Mans Prototype 2 in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07 he shares with Jeremy Clarke, laying down a 1:16.545 lap at 114.708 mph to finish just 0.781 second shy of Estre's overall benchmark. Paul Di Resta followed in the No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA LMP2 07 co-driven by Daniel Goldburg.
Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports locked out the top two spots in Grand Touring Daytona Pro. Nicky Catsburg put the No. 4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R ahead of teammate Alexander Sims in the No. 3 by 0.078 of a second, courtesy of a 1:23.567 lap at 105.069 mph. GTD PRO represents the tightest title fight in the entire championship, with only 67 points covering the top five contenders. Catsburg and Tommy Milner sit second in the standings, trailing class leaders Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi—who wound up seventh in class Friday in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO—by 23 markers. Over in Grand Touring Daytona, Trent Hindman led the way in the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 with a 1:23.630 lap, sharing the machine with Danny Formal.
