Connor de Phillippi’s #25 BMW M8 swapped the fastest time with Jesse Krohn in the #24 RLL-run sister car early on, but they were both pipped by Garcia’s 50.302s lap of the 1.474-mile course in Connecticut, set in the closing four minutes of the hour-long second session.

This effort was some way short of the 50.065s laptime set by Nick Tandy’s #911 Porsche in the far cooler morning session.

The Ford GTs of Richard Westbrook and Joey Hand were next up, ahead of Marcel Fassler in the second Corvette. The Porsches were the slowest GTLM contenders in this session, with Tandy just outpacing Earl Bamber.

BMW clung to the fastest time in the GT Daytona class, with Bill Auberlen setting the quickest time of 51.715s in his #96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6.

The main drama of the session was Toni Vilander’s #63 Ferrari 488 losing a right-rear wheel in pitlane and grinding to a halt in the Porsche #912 pit. He recovered to set the second fastest GTD time of the session, under a tenth away from Auberlen.

Session results: