Loftsgard Tops Opening Practice at COTA

Photo: Wes Duenkel/Ford

Cole Loftsgard led the way in opening practice for this weekend’s Mustang Challenge North America season finale at Circuit of The Americas.

The Round 3 Racing driver, who enters the final two rounds with a 170-point lead over Devin Anderson, reeled off a best time of 2:20:510 in Friday morning’s 30-minute session.

Loftgard’s chart-topping time, which came in a last-lap improvement, was 0.486 seconds faster than the No. 34 Wheelhouse Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse R of Will Lucas, who ended up second quickest.

Anderson, in the No. 22 TechSport Racing entry, was third quickest, while Tate Pritt and Ethan Low completed the top-five in their Automatic Raxcing and Flying Lion Motorsports entries, respectively.

Sandy Satullo, meanwhile, was sixth quickest.

Wheelhouse team owner Dan McKeever topped the Dark Horse Legends time charts in his series debut.

McKeever posted the seventh quickest time overall and was nearly one-second quicker than class points leader Tom Tait, who was second.

Brad McCall, another Mustang Challenge team owner in his debut, was third quickest in class in the No. 70 Round 3 entry.

The session ran without any red flags, although both the No. 63 Wheelhouse entry of Joseph Dederichs and Chris Clarke’s No. 9 Paley Motorsport with AAG Mustang were showed as stopped on the track in Sector 2.

A second and final practice session is on tap for 2:30 p.m. CST.

RESULTS: Practice 1

Source: Sports Car 365