Petit Le Mans is, in all honesty, probably one of the year's best races.
The race from daylight into full darkness, taking place at the undulating, rollercoaster-like Road Atlanta, never fails to produce a fantastic season closer for the IMSA Sportscar Championship, which continues to go from strength to strength.
Plus, the prospect of a championship battle in the Drivers', Teams', and Manufacturers' championships, means both will be going all out to claim the titles.
Cadillac took first blood in qualifying, with Jack Aitken claiming his first IMSA pole position in magnificent fashion, just when the American manufacturer needed it most, with the #7 Porsche of guest driver Matt Campbell, in second.
But, what qualifying for a 10 hour race isn't all that relevant. Practice long-run pace, though, can tell us a lot. We've taken the top 20% average laps from each practice session in an attempt to piece together what the race may end up looking like.
In the graph above, we've averaged out the top 20% lap times for each car from each of the three practice sessions. We've then found each car's fastest session, on average, and displayed it in graph form.
The #01 Cadillac looked very quick in practice, setting a 1:11.808 on average in the first session, which Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande, and Scott Dixon didn't beat through the next two sessions.
In contrast, the fastest Porsche on average was only fifth fastest across the three sessions — slower than Cadillac, Acura and BMW.
The midfield is very tight, with nothing to chose from between the car which set second-fastest individual average in a single practice — the #40 WTRAndretti Acura — to the car in ninth, the #25 BMW.
The two slowest cars, the #63 Lamborghini and the customer #5 Proton Porsche, look to be quite a way off the pace, judging by their practice pace.
It looks slightly better for Porsche when you average out the three session averages for each car. That said, the Cadillac is still leading by a decent margin, and the #24 BMW is second fastest, around two and a half tenths behind Cadillac.
The #6 Porsche – the car in the Drivers' championship hunt with Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy — was third quickest on average, just a a couple of hundredths behind the BMW.
The two and half tenths a lap on average to the #01 Cadillac will be hard to beat though, especially around a lap as fast and short as Road Atlanta.
Acura and BMW are in amongst a very tight midfield at Road Atlanta. Image: IMSA / LAT Images / Richard Dole
It's also incredibly close in the midfield between the two Acuras, the #31 pole-sitting Cadillac, and the #7 Porsche, which will start on the front row alongside the Cadillac.
Once again, the Lamborghini and #5 Proton Porsche languish at the back, quite a way off the pace, although maybe less so compared to their fastest indiviual session average.
And, it gets even better for Porsche when averaging out both cars (for teams that run two cars — i.e. the four full-season manufacturer teams). In this sense, BMW have slipped back to fourth fastest, while Porsche and the WTRAndretti Acuras have jumped up to second and third.
It's very very close between each of the four main manufacturers, though — less than three tenths a lap on average. The customer JDC-Miller Porsche squad is around four tenths on average back compared to BMW, while Lamborghini are over a second off Cadillac.
The other customer Porsche team, Proton Competition, running in the iconic Mustang Sampling colours, brought up the rear on team average pace, a further three tenths off Lamborghini.
Cadillac, though, remain the quickest.
In that sense, this indicates it's Cadillac's race to lose. They took pole in qualifying by a large margin, and they were fastest in practice by pretty much any measure you can choose, when looking at averages.
Finally – above is a graph with the averages for each car, from each session. Peruse at your leisure!
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