2016 Petit Le Mans

The Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda was the 2016 edition of the Petit Le Mans automotive endurance race, held on October 1, 2016, at the Road Atlanta circuit in Braselton, Georgia, United States. It was the 12th and final race of the 2016 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and the third Petit Le Mans run since the formation of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in 2014.

Background
International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) president Scott Atherton confirmed the race was part of the schedule for the 2016 IMSA SportsCar Championship (IMSA SCC) in August 2015. It was the third consecutive year the event was held as part of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and the 19th Petit Le Mans. The Petit Le Mans was the last of twelve scheduled automobile endurance races of 2016 by IMSA, and the last in the four round North American Endurance Cup (NAEC). The race took place at the 12-turn, 2.540 mi Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia on October 1, 2016.

Practice
There were four practice sessions preceding the start of the race on Saturday, three on Thursday and one on Friday. The first two one-hour sessions were on Thursday morning and afternoon. The third held later that evening ran for 90 minutes; the fourth on Friday morning lasted an hour.

Practice 1
The first practice session took place at 11:15 am ET on Thursday and ended with Olivier Pla topping the charts for Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian, with a lap time of 1:14.157.

Practice 2
The second practice session took place at 3:25 pm ET on Thursday and ended with Oswaldo Negri Jr. topping the charts for Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian, with a lap time of 1:13.923.

Night Practice
The night practice session took place at 7:30 pm ET on Thursday and ended with Olivier Pla topping the charts for Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian, with a lap time of 1:13.541.

Final Practice
The fourth and final practice session took place at 10:15 am ET on Friday and ended with Olivier Pla topping the charts for Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian, with a lap time of 1:10.786.

Qualifying
In Friday afternoon's 90-minute four-group qualifying, each category had separate 15-minute sessions. Regulations stipulated that teams nominate one qualifying driver, with the fastest laps determining each class' starting order. IMSA arranged the grid to put Prototypes ahead of the PC, GTLM and GTD cars.

Pole positions in each class are indicated in bold and by ‡. All Prototype and Prototype Challenge cars were grouped together on the starting grid, regardless of qualifying position.


 * The No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing entry was moved to the back of the P field after the team elected to change tires after qualifying.
 * The No. 20 BAR1 Motorsports entry was moved to the back of the PC field for starting the race with a different driver than who qualified.

Results
Class winners are denoted in bold and with ‡