Li Leads Practice 2 at COTA

Photo: Dan Bathie/McLaren

James Li set the fastest Practice 2 time of the McLaren Trophy America weekend at the Circuit of The Americas with a last lap improvement that saw him jump to the top of the time sheets.

The RWE Motorsports driver reeled off a 2:09.668 lap as the checkered flag fell on the 15-minute session to put his Pro class No. 71 McLaren Artura Trophy Evo 0.808 seconds ahead of GMG Racing’s James Sofronas.

Notably, these were the first official practice laps for Li after he failed to take to the track in yesterday’s practice session.

Sofronas led the majority of the session in the No. 14 GMG McLaren and comfortably set the quickest Am class time, with stablemate Andre Solano behind, third-quickest overall in the car he shares with Practice 1 pace-setter John Capestro-Dubets.

The No. 10 RWE machine of John Dempsey and Andrew Davis was fourth-fastest overall and set the Pro-Am pace with Skip Barber Racing’s Tommy Pintos rounding out the top five overall fastest times.

Race control issued numerous track limits penalties throughout the session, invalidating lap times, and issuing warnings to multiple drivers, with particular attention paid to the exit of Turn 19.

Robby Stockard did not turn any laps in the Friday practice session in his Hooper Street Racing Machine.

The makeup Race 2 from Sonoma Raceway takes place at 2:15 p.m. CST with live coverage available on McLaren Automotive and SRO’s GT World YouTube channels, with first qualifying for the COTA races set for Saturday morning.

RESULTS: Practice 2