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Marshall Pruett / Images by IMSA

California's PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports got its first taste of the 2017 Ligier JS P217-Gibson V8 during the opening day of testing at Daytona on Tuesday, and despite shipping delays that pushed its debut to the afternoon, the team says it was pleased with the experience.

Once the factory test car – built by Onroak in France – cleared customs, PR1 co-owner Bobby Oergel and his championship-winning PC team got busy prepping the WEC-spec P2 for the unique 3.56-mile oval/road course. PR1 veterans Mike Guasch, Tom Kimber-Smith and Jose Gutierrez were joined by Ligier-affiliated Julien Canal to help the team to log approximately 200 miles of running after the lunch break.
"We got the car at 5:30 in the morning and decided it was better to work towards making the afternoon productive instead of thrashing to get out in the morning," Oergel told RACER. "We unboxed everything, got the car ready, and went into the afternoon, which was flawless.
"We worked through a couple of [setup] sweeps, gathered some data, and didn't try to go fast. We had Julien Canal in the car to start because he had to jet off to Bahrain for the WEC finale, and then we put Tom [Kimber-Smith] in after that."























Although IMSA did not provide timing and scoring data for Tuesday, unofficial lap times for Kimber-Smith in the 1m39.5s range would suggest the 2015 pole time of 1m39.1s set by the Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS P2-Honda (qualifying for the 2016 event was run in the rain) will be eclipsed with ease once Prototype teams gain more familiarity with the 2017 cars.

With one more day of running already underway, Oergel says he'll use today's testing time to continue easing the team into the package it will campaign in IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Prototype class.
"In all fairness, everything has been smooth," he continued. "Jose Gutierrez and Mike Guasch will do the bulk of the running (today) and were looking to do data scans to learn the car; that's really all we care about at this moment. There's plenty of time to try and go fast, but that comes after you learn the ins and the outs of the car and what it likes. Onroak has been a big help; we're coexisting better than could have been perceived. It's not a politically correct statement: they're just really good guys to work with."
Oergel can't wait for the next IMSA test at Daytona in December when the Ligier and other WEC P2s, along with new Daytona Prototype internationals, will show more of their outright potential.
"Even with the conservative nature of how we're running, the speed trap numbers are going to be really impressive if they don't put a hurt on them," he said. "And the Gibson motor sounds great – it's like the old flat-crank IndyCar motor. The new tire from Continental tire is also working fine. It's a pretty nice package and there's a lot more to come."