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Top 8 entirely made of Cadillacs and Orecas, covered by a whopping half a second.
Mazda posted a 1:36.633, less than a tenth off of 8th place(1:36.567), and almost 3/10ths over 10th place(1:36.931). Good signs on their pace, though the failure of the second one to run the session is cause for concern. For reference, the fastest Mazda last year did 1:39.
The top 13 in P were within a second of pole with the 13th fastest time being set by Fernando Alonso at 1:37.008 - the only Ligier(or Ligier-based) car to go under 1:38.
From the look of things, a considerably more fairly-balanced field than last year, but still some concerning gaps. I'm of the belief that there will never be a truly properly balanced race at Daytona due to it's unique nature, there only being one opportunity to get it right each year and it happening at the start of the season making it impossible to use season-long performance as a metric(things always change a bit during off-season development, even in classes that restrict such).
But I think this is the closest we'll ever see the P class get at Daytona. Particularly considering that the difference from pole to second was 0.007s between two cars that can't get much different without being in different classes.
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