In Friday morning’s one-hour practice session of the American Le Mans Series race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, there were far fewer incidents and much more green flag running with times dropping from where they were yesterday.

The first and only red flag ended the session three minutes early, as Scott Sharp went off at Turn 3 in his Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferrari F430 GT.

The lone Mazda powerplant in the field lived up to the home track billing as Guy Smith in the Dyson Racing Lola Mazda set quick time, a lap of 1:14.335 pacing both prototypes and the overall timesheets. Simon Pagenaud for Patron Highcroft Racing in an HPD ARX-01c was next at 1:14.787, followed by Klaus Graf in the Muscle Milk Team CytoSport Porsche RS Spyder at 1:15.102. The prototype battle is wide open heading into qualifying, to be held Friday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. local and Pacific time.

Sharp’s car was second quickest in GT, with Johannes van Overbeek at the wheel. The ESM Ferrari trailed only Joerg Bergmeister in the Flying Lizard Porsche. Bergmeister timed in at 1:23.580 and “JVO” at 1:24.120.

Johnny Mowlem in the PR1/Mathiasen entry led LMPC in that team’s second race, with a lap at 1:19.976. It was nearly one second quicker than second-fastest, Burt Frisselle in the No. 95 Level 5 Motorsports at 1:20.905. The LMPC class is solely comprised of Oreca FLM 09 cars with MICHELIN ® tires. Andy Lally of TRG led the GTC class of 10 Porsche GT3 Cup cars.