Just before the split 15 minute qualifying sessions, a 30 minute practice session allowed the teams additional time on track to evaluate and hopefully improve their set ups.
A major issue at Long Beach is finding track time for the sports car guys that is representative of the race time. Early morning? No way. 5:30 pm? Not really either. That is well after the race is over on Saturday…
Giancarlo Fisichella (Risi Ferrari), who is new to the street circuit at Long Beach, explained, “There is so little time in the schedule for practice this weekend and, as the team explained to me before we started, the early morning session and the late afternoon session showed themselves to be very different as far as the track and the feel of the car is concerned.” It is the same for everybody – while Risi is experienced at Long Beach, this ex-F-1 driver is not.
Anyway, the 30 minute session was pretty much uneventful – thankfully. Setting the best time was Christian Fittipaldi for Action Express, while GTLM continued pretty much as the morning session did with the top three consisting of a BMW and two Corvettes.
GTLM qualifying came first under much warmer temperatures than expected. Even with that, it was immediately clear that qualifying was going to be no different to what the earlier sessions had been. First off, it was BMW to the fore, with Dirk Mueller and Bill Auberlen trading fast laps throughout the first half of the session. Tommy Milner snuck a quick one in there too for Corvette, but for the most part it was all BMW. Then the ever-young Jan Magnussen popped to the top, with a 1:17.939. Game over for pole.
Mags – “Qualifying went completely to plan. I went out and found a good gap. I had to back off once to find myself another gap. After that, it was a matter of trying to work every corner and finding a little bit here and there. At one point, we were P3 and I thought ‘I’m 0.8 seconds faster than I have been when we did the qualifying simulation. I don’t know if there is any more to come.’ But I did one more lap and pushed hard. It stuck and I got pole position.”
Auberlen (second in class) – “Judging from last year, we have definitely made a step forward. We were on pole for most of the session, but at the end the Corvette went by. Today we were P2 in the first practice, P1 in the second and now P2 in qualifying. If we can just stay in that area tomorrow I’ll be happy. It’s always a tough race here and this is an extremely competitive field. We’ve been consistently at the front today and I hope that bodes well for another great finish.”
This was the first pole for the new Corvette C7.R. Continuing the theme from Friday, the grid is set to again feature the top four of Corvette – BMW – BMW – Corvette.
In Prototype, or should we say Daytona Prototype, it ended up as an all-Ford Riley front row, with Scott Pruett again coming through in the last half of the session to take the overall pole, His best lap was 0.041 seconds quicker than Ozz Negri was able to take his Shank Ford Riley around the track.
Third fastest was Christian Fittipaldi, 0.246 seconds back. The fastest of the P2 spec cars was the OAK entry, 0.343 seconds off the pace. The Extreme Speed game plan did not really work out this time – their two cars are gridded back in the 7th and 8th spots – the #2 over the #1. Dalziel should have been further up the grid in the #1, but he lost drive and parked at Turn 1, bringing out a red. Based upon IMSA regs, he lost his best time of the session.
Pruett (about coming on strong late in the session) – “That’s one of the things about Long Beach, you get faster and faster the longer you go around the track. You get a little braver, a little braver, until you start scraping the walls. It took a time for us to get going this season. Daytona was a bit disastrous, then we went to Sebring and got the win, and now the pole. It makes all those long hours and seven days a week and lots of work starting to show themselves and pay off. It’s certainly better to start at the front, because in Long Beach you don’t know what to expect. I’ve been here in Indycars where it was green to checker without a yellow, but then other races where it was constant yellow. We unloaded with a good car in launch position and all we’ve had to do was fine tune it. We had the qualifying setup in and we’ll dial it back a bit for the race tomorrow.”
Negri (on qualifying second) – “Hard work, works! We’ve been working nonstop since Sebring. The car rolled out of the trailer awesome and with the car being good the way it was we could just keep working on laps and improving. We made very little changes for qualifying. I was optimistic because I realized the lap time I did during the short session, I did on old tires and I really thought I could improve quite a bit. We did all of our homework. Ford did their job. Shank was asking me giving me two tenths (during the qualifying run) and I was digging as hard as I could and I’m just very happy.”
Now comes a long Saturday, in which the cars don’t take to the track until it’s race time, scheduled to start just after 3pm local time.
GH
