Jan Magnussen went quickest in GT1 for Corvette Racing, the Dane turning in a lap of 1min 18.040secs in the Corvette C6.R that he will share with Johnny O'Connell. The pairing has won four of five races this season and enters Mid-Ohio with the class title lead. Magnussen was nearly a second faster than team-mate Olivier Beretta.
Just as it was in qualifying at Lime Rock, Farnbacher Loles Racing was quickest in GT2, although Richard Westbrook's lap of 1min 20.645secs barely put Porsche ahead in its battle with
Ferrari. Tafel Racing's Dirk Muller was second in class in the Ferrari F430 GT that he will drive with Dominik Farnbacher. Muller's time of 1min 21.111secs was 0.166secs better than Jaime Melo's best effort for Risi Competizione.
A third-place class finish at Lime Rock - the first race since a GT2 victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans - is being taken as a possible signal of the start of an upward trend for Risi.
"We could have finished better at Lime Rock than third," Melo admitted, "We just had a little bit more bad luck - which was an improvement over other races. But that is the race. I can't say that it has been a bad year, because we did win Le Mans but, hopefully, we will continue to improve."
Risi may face more opposition than that from those ahead of it in testing, as Johannes van Overbeek will be looking to extend a run of success at Mid-Ohio as he leads the Flying Lizard Motorsports team into battle. van Overbeek has won three GT2 races at Mid-Ohio since the team's rookie season in 2004, last year's Porsche Cup winner taking top spot in 2004 with Darren Law, in 2006 with Wolf Henzler and, last year, with Jörg Bergmeister.
This season, he'll try to win with a fourth different team-mate, having formed a competitive partnership with France's Patrick Pilet. The duo sits third in class, but placed only seventh at Lime Rock.
