Christian Fittipaldi put the #5 Corvette DP on pole on the streets of Detroit after a lap of 1:24.746. His time was just 0.05 seconds faster than Ricky Taylor’s Konica Minolta Vette, after much chopping and changing at the top of the times throughout the session. It’s Action Express’ first pole position in the series.
“I had a good car, and I didn’t get a lot of laps in practice and it was still fast,” said Fittipaldi, “I’m extremely excited for the team, because we’ve had some rough races. After our last race at [Mazda Raceway] Laguna [Seca], we went back home and put a lot of thought into why the competition killed us.
“We had two really good test days, and I think it translated into our speed here.”
Third in the session was the VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette which posted a time of 1:25.156 at the hands of Michael Valiante. It was a dominant showing for the Corvette runners who finished 1-2-3 on the Michigan street circuit mere miles away from the GM plant.
The only Ford DP, run by Ganassi, managed to slot in fourth and 1.2 seconds back from Fittipaldi’s hot lap. Sixth was the first of two LMP2 chassis in the race – the Michael Shank Racing Ligier of Jon Pew and Oswaldo Negri – which was over 2 seconds off the pace. The Mazda Prototype will start a lowly 12th on the grid tomorrow
In PC the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports Oreca with James French driving took pole, edging out Chris Cumming’s RSR car by just 0.004 of a second on its final flyer.
After a big shunt in practice, and a big rebuild that followed, Dion Von Moltke put the Paul Miller Racing Audi R8 at the top of the GTD class. During the second practice session of the weekend he had an off at Turn 7 damaging both the front and rear end of the car, leaving the mechanics with a lot of work to do overnight.
A great effort by the crew got the R8 out and looking brand new for the Quali. The car grabbed pole by just over seven tenths of a second ahead of the #33 Riley Viper and #007 TRG Aston Martin.
“When the car came back, we were initially wondering if we’d even make the race tomorrow,” said von Moltke. “We have the best team in the paddock; the guys did an unbelievable job. We were able to roll out about five minutes before qualifying.
“I lost the car [in practice] and before I even knew it was gone,” he added. “I probably just made a mistake, hit a bump, and then hydroplaned. It can happen, but it’s not what you want. It was really unfortunate, but luckily, I’ve got the best team in the paddock to fix this.”
Stephen Kilbey
