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[h=2]Dalziel leads first PWC practice at Long Beach[/h] Friday, 07 April 2017


By RACER Staff / Images by Richard James

Ryan Dalziel paced the GT field in the Pirelli World Challenge's sole practice session Friday at Long Beach.

Dalziel, who is pulling double-duty this weekend with PWC and the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, drove his CRP Racing Mercedes AMG GT3 around the Long Beach streets in 1m18.994s, +0.148s faster than current GT points leader Patrick Long and just short of Alvaro Parente’s Long Beach GT qualifying record lap of 1m18.947s set last year.
“We obviously didn't have a good start to our season in St. Pete,” Dalziel saud. “We know how much potential the Mercedes has so it's good to finally put it together for a session. We learned a lot at St. Pete, and we got a lot of help from AMG since then, and it's refreshing right now - takes a little bit of pressure off everybody. I'm happy we did double this weekend and a successful first day in both cars, so let's hope it continues.
"I've done this enough now that hopefully I'll be able to get through the whole weekend but I'm sure I'll be hurting Sunday night.”
Defending race winner Parente, who was awarded the win last year after Johnny O'Connell was assessed a postrace technical infraction, was third (1m19.144s), followed by K-PAX teammate Bryan Sellers (1m19.161s) – also pulling double duty this weekend. Cadillac Racing's O'Connell (1m19.228s) rounded out the top five.
The top 11 cars were all within a second of Dalziel in the caution-free hour. Before Dalziel’s top practice time, Long, Parente, Dalziel, Sellers and O’Connell were all just eight-hundredths apart in practice times with just a minute left in the Friday’s GT session.
GMG Racing's James Sofranas was the quickest in GTA, setting a lap of 1m20.103s. Wright Motorsports' Michael Schein was +0.052s behind.
“It's definitely a track I'm familiar with, but regardless the competition is so stiff that it's good to be in the middle of the pack [starting 13th overall],” said Sofronas. “At this point, we rolled off the truck with a pretty good car, made two changes, then stick it up mid-session; we tried to get a balance and a long run, and the car kept coming back to us and was pretty stable. For now, it's a good position to be in, and we have good balance but I know the pole in GTA will be a second faster."

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