McNish fastest in Petit warm-up

The stage is set for Petit Le Mans powered by the Totally New MAZDA6. Audi Sport North America’s Allan McNish turned in the fastest time in Saturday morning’s warm-up session at Road Atlanta with a 1:08.403 (133.678 mph) around the 12-turn, 2.54-mile circuit. McNish qualified his Audi R10 TDI second for this morning’s start of the 1,000-mile/10-hour race in which he will team with Dindo Capello and Emanuele Pirro.

LMP2 pole-winner Ryan Briscoe was second overall and first in class in a Penske Motorsports Porsche RS Spyder. Briscoe, who will drive with Helio Castroneves, posted a time of 1:09.754 (131.089 mph). He was just 0.031 seconds ahead of the pole-sitting Peugeot 908 HDi of fastest qualifier Stephane Sarrazin, Nic Minassian and Christian Klien.

After McNish’s time, the next eight cars were within one second of each other.

In GT1, Ron Fellows went fastest in the pole-sitting Corvette C6.R with a lap of 1:17.998 (117.234 mph). He will drive with championship leaders Jan Magnussen and Johnny O’Connell, who was the pole qualifier. Fellows went just 0.005 seconds quicker than the other Corvette of Olivier Beretta, Oliver Gavin and Max Papis.

In GT2, Tafel Racing’s Dominik Farnbacher went quickest in the Ferrari that he will share with Dirk Mueller. Farnbacher’s lap of 1:20.456 (113.652 mph) was 0.02 seconds better than the first of Flying Lizard Motorsports’ Porsches of Jörg Bergmeister, Wolf Henzler and Marc Lieb.