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Daytona International Speedway today hosted Qualifying for the 24 Hours which opens the IMSA SportsCar Championship season. Qualifying took place over two rounds that were both reserved for production-derived cars in temperature as low as 10°C (air and asphalt), saw Davide Rigon get the best result for Ferrari, with the factory driver qualifying 12th in GTD Pro (18th overall) in the DragonSpeed car. Among the 296 GT3s entered in GTD Frederik Schandorff qualified eighth in the Conquest Racing Ferrari.
GTD Pro. Factory driver Davide Rigon - winner of the last edition of the 24 Hours of Daytona - qualified the number 81 Ferrari of DragonSpeed by stopping the clock at 1'46‘’858, giving the Italian driver the 12th position in GTD Pro, with a gap of 1'335 from the number 64 Ford, which took pole position overall among the production-derived cars.
GTD. The session, which opened qualifying at Daytona, saw the 22 cars entered in the class reserved for mixed crews of professionals and gentlemen drivers take to the track.
The fastest of the seven Ferraris was the number 70 Inception car driven by Frederik Schandorff in qualifying, eighth in class (20th overall), with a time of 1'46‘’928, 0.294 off the GTD best set by the number 120 Porsche. Schandorff beat factory driver Daniel Serra (1'46‘’959), ninth in class (21st overall) in the number 34 Conquest Racing 296 GT3.
In a session that saw the top ten GTD cars bunched within just over three tenths of a second, the other Ferraris came 11th with James Calado at the wheel of the number 021 Triarsi Competizione car, and 14th with Simon Mann at the wheel of the number 21 AF Corse car (25th and 29th overall). Roberto Lacorte took 19th in the number 47 Cetilar Racing 296 GT3, ahead of Custodio Toledo in the number 50 AF Corse car (34th and 35th overall respectively). Twenty-second was Eddie Cheever in the 023 of Triarsi Competizione.
The programme. The 24 Hours of Daytona weekend continues on Friday 24 January with the third free practice session, from 11.20am to 12.20pm. The race will start on Saturday 25 at 1.40 p.m. (times indicated are local).