It was yet another glorious day at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where the TUDOR were on track for a 60 minute session in the morning and again for qualifying late in the day.
To be honest, there simply were not many surprises during the course of the day, either in practice or in qualifying.
The battle for the overall pole came down to a 2-car shoot out between the elder statesman Scott Pruett and the significantly younger Jordan Taylor.
Pruett was the first to strike, setting a 1:20.145 early in the 15 minute session.
Jordan responded with a 1:19.809 and then on it was Pruett responding and Jordan countering. It was the WTR Corvette that was the first to get down into the 1:18s, to which Pruett responded with a 1:18.940, .026 seconds faster. But it was Jordan that got the last shot in, a 1:18.718. That ended the fight and it was Jordan Taylor that brought the team their second consecutive pole position.
Afterwards, the confident Jordan stated, “we knew we had a strong car here, and I knew it was a pole car, so I knew if I didn’t get the pole, I would be disappointed. I am happy to get it. It was closer than we thought. Hopefully we can kind of do the same thing we did at Long Beach and lead from the front and dictate the race. I think we have a potential race-winning car. We did a lot of work in practice on separating the two cars (qualifying setup and race setup). We had different setups for both sessions. We worked on the racecar with Ricky because he is going to be in it longer. I think the qualifying car was good. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it was, the drive, but we got the pole and hopefully we will have a good race.”
The way the event had gone thus far, qualifying second was actually a positive for Pruett and the Ganassi Ford team. They would have their moments in sessions, but it seemed that the longer the session went, the more they struggled. Maybe that was key, but according to Scott, they’re still coming to grips with the Ford powered Riley. “The No. 01 Ford EcoBoost Riley was best in qualifying. It’s been solid here all weekend. We’re just trying to clean up a few little issues. In qualifying, we just did whatever we had to do to get the best lap we could. We were up and down on the bars just seeing if we could make something happen. Now we’re going into the race, so we need to get the car settled down a little bit.”
These positions were helped by the fact that the Michael Shank HPD Ligier simply was not as competitive here in the session. Thus far, it had been fastest in every session, but every session saw Oz Negri setting the time. In qualifying, it was John Pew in the car and he simply doesn’t have the pace of the quick Brazilian.
That said, Pew was able to put down a respectable time of 1:19.651, which was good for 4th quickest, his best qualifying effort ever. “I was just pushing it as hard as I could,” said Pew following the session. “This Honda Ligier and this track go really well together. I’m not quite at the limit although I found the limit in a couple of corners! It was good. It’s a great car, and a great track. Ozz (Negri, co-driver) has been a great friend, a great coach, and a mentor and a guy I look up to in many ways. He’s very helpful. We don’t really know what will happen tomorrow. With all of these classes there could be many yellows. Our car tends to start out a little bit slower because it’s light but we’ll see what happens in the race.”
In GTLM, It was the Porsches setting the pace early on, Pilet in the 911 and Christensen in the 912. Then the Corvettes and the Risi Ferrari joined in, all setting laps in the high 1:22 ranges.
But like at Long Beach, once the BMWs got up to speed, there was no stopping them. Dirk Werner and Lucus Luhr swapped fast times, then it was all Werner, eventually getting down to a 1:22.362. Luhr and Pierre Kaffer set identical 1:22.610 times, but it was Luhr that was credited with the second starting position but having turned in the lap first. Impressive was the fact that Werner was able to set a time faster than all of the PC qualifiers.
The time set by Werner was a new track record for the class, but he’d expected to go even faster. “The track was quite slick, much more slick than I had anticipated. It was likely due to the mix of rubber that had been laid down before we got on track. Usually we go much quicker in qualifying than we do in the practice sessions, but this time we were only a couple of tenths faster. But the car was good and now we have to focus on the race tomorrow. It does give us some confidence, knowing how good we were at Long Beach, it looks like some of that is carrying over here at Laguna.”
For Kaffer, the results were as well as could have been expected. “I’m pleased with this result, I mean we did what we could. We improved the car session-by-session and that’s what we have right now. Obviously, it looks like the BMW has a very, very, very strong package when we see the lap time of Werner, which was the same like Auberlen in Long Beach. The rest of the field looks like everyone is very tight together. I really appreciate what the (Risi) boys have done before the qualifying and now we need to concentrate on our race. Obviously, Fisichella and myself have done a lot of laps and for qualifying we needed to squeeze the last hundredth’s out of the car and the tires. I’m happy to be third tomorrow in the race and thanks to my team and to Michelin. They have all done an awesome job.”
Since Long Beach, IMSA has granted the Ferrari a new aero update, based upon what the factory developed over in Europe. Since the tracks are much smoother over there, the new package, which mostly consists of a new under car treatment, has been found to be friendly with lower ride height. Unfortunately the team is forced to run the car higher than they’d like so they avoid bottoming out on the down hill at the corkscrew. Thus far, the set up is a compromise, but you can be sure the team will be getting the most out of the new set up soon.
PC has throughout the weekend been an impressive showing by the RSR team. Qualifying was no different, as Chris Cumming earned pole, but just barely.
He was able to earn pole by only .004 seconds over Mike Guasch and the PR1-Mathiasen Oreca. “It feels good. It was a really good session. It was full of action we shouldn’t have had. I actually ended up making contact with 2 other cars. They were racing maybe a bit too much during qualifying. We were first or second fastest at each session. We thought we’d be on pole but a bit a more than 4 thousands of a second. I think it’s going to be tight tomorrow. We are all mixed in with the GTLM traffic to start. It might be a little bit of a mess at the first, so it’s going to be exciting. It’s always good racing here. I expect a few yellows here that will keep us packed up and it’s going to be close.”
The top three (Cumming, Guasch and James French/Performance Tech) were nicely bunched, with French only .124 seconds back.
This weekend has also been a strong one for Park Place and their Porsche. They’ve had speed throughout most of the 2015 season, but thus far haven’t had much to show for it. Maybe winning this pole will be the start of something for this team. Throughout the even here at Laguna, they’ve been at or near the top of the times, so when Patrick Lindsey brought the Porsche through for the class pole, it wasn’t a huge surprise. “First of all the track was really tricky, following a CTSC race. We kind of go clean the track off for everyone. The first few laps were really dicey. I was worried we couldn’t put down a lap indicative of our Porsche. Everything went right and it was weird to get clear of everyone else. GTD is one of the tightest classes in the series. I’m really excited to bring it home for Park Place.”
“It’s going to be difficult tomorrow with all the cars on the track. At Laguna, bad things can happen quickly. We have an interesting drive time strategy in GTD, we have a 60 minute drive-time minimum. Some of the other cars might have to conserve a little, but if we have the performance we’re going to try and get the gap. But we’ll try to time the stop as soon as the window opens up. For us in the slowest class it’s pretty hectic. The biggest concern is to try and lose the least amount of times for the GTLM cars and the P cars. Laguna is a very fast circuit, it carries a lot of momentum, but it can breed cautions if we get slowed up. I know it’s going to be really good racing here, the track is known for having tight races. It’s always been spectacular racing. I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
What was surprising was that Lindsey set the class pole by nearly a second. Plus it was also surprising who he set it over, which was none other than Marc Miller in the 93 Viper. Thus far, the Vipers had been nowhere, especially on a trouble filled Friday. In the morning session, the Keating/Bleekemolen Viper were 5th fastest in class and then in qualifying Keating was able grab 4th in class, but the effort from Miller really came out of nowhere. After languishing nowhere on the time sheets, the Vipers again, despite the recent performance adjustments appear to be right back in the hunt again.
Dion von Moltke was able to turn an impressive enough lap to place the Paul Miller Audi 3rd on the GTD grid.
The weather for Sunday race day looks to be changing. As of Saturday night, the forecast is for clouds with a high temperature only reaching the low 60’s. As anyone who has been around Laguna much knows, a weather forecast can very much be taken only as an advisory. What actually will occur is anyone’s guess…
