During Thursday’s press conference before his qualifying session at Watkins Glen International, Ricky Taylor called Turn 9 “the most frustrating corner in the world.”
A few hours later, the corner was far less frustrating and Taylor was far more gratified.
Taylor managed the blind, uphill left-hander with aplomb Thursday evening, recording a fast lap of 1 minute, 30.058 seconds (135.912 mph) around WGI’s 11-turn, 3.4-mile circuit to win the pole position for the IMSA WeatherTech 240 at The Glen.
It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Part of what makes Turn 9 so tricky is the difficulty it places on tires. As drivers try to time their fastest laps when their tires are optimal, Turn 9 doesn’t want to play that game.
“Normally the pace improves everywhere else around the track,” Taylor said. “That’s why Turn 9 always bites you at the end because the rears start to drop. That corner is always rear-limited. You get it around there and it’s like, ‘I hope I can hold it.’”
Taylor and his #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 DPi were 0.346 seconds faster than runner-up Olivier Pla in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura he shares with Dane Cameron.
Taylor’s lap put the #10 car and teammate Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 1 starting position for Friday’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race as they continue to lead the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) standings at the season’s halfway point. The Motul Pole Award effort also came less than a week after Taylor won the pole for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen.
Taylor’s best lap came Thursday immediately after a bad one.
“The lap before I completely messed it up, but in that (pole-winning) lap, I happened to survive a little bit better,” Taylor said. “It generally does. Once I survived on that last lap, you just kind of bring it home. The last two corners are pretty straightforward.”
Kevin Magnussen had the third-fastest lap, bringing the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi V.R he co-drives with Renger van der Zande home in 1:30.545.
Keating Takes LMP2 Pole
As Taylor won the DPi pole, Ben Keating used the final lap of the session to slip past Steven Thomas for the pole position in LMP2. Keating’s effort of 1:34.969 (128.884 mph) was just enough to top Thomas’ best of 1:35.392, which he’d used to top Keating on the previous lap.
Keating and teammate Mikkel Jensen will start first in class and seventh overall in the #52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07. Thomas and co-driver Tristan Nunez will start second in LMP2 and eighth overall in the #11 WIN Autosport car. Thomas, Nunez and Thomas Merrill teamed to win the Sahlen’s Six Hours on Sunday.
“I feel like I pulled off heroic sectors for the last two sectors,” Keating said. “I threw it into the Bus Stop faster than I’ve ever driven through there. I went flat around the Carousel. I went flat through the last two turns. I could not believe that I pulled it off.”
Corvette Double Up In GTLM
As they’ve done most of the 2021 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, the Corvette Racing entries battled tooth and nail Thursday evening at Watkins Glen International.
On this occasion, it was Jordan Taylor in the #3 Corvette C8.R getting the better, barely, of teammate Nick Tandy in the #4, in GT Le Mans (GTLM) qualifying for Friday’s IMSA WeatherTech 240 at The Glen. Taylor nipped Tandy by 0.220 seconds on a last-lap dash by both drivers to win the class pole position. It is the 17th career pole position for Taylor and first since WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca last October.
“It was a good lap, obviously,” Taylor said after being clocked at 1 minute, 43.821 seconds (117.895 mph). “This session was a bit different and stressful with different conditions leading into it. We didn’t know whether to go slick or wet (condition tires). Thankfully, the guys made the right call with slicks, and then it was all about building temperatures in the tires and nailing it at the end.”
The Corvettes swapped the top spot at least four times in the last five minutes of the 15-minute session on Watkins Glen’s historic 11-turn, 3.4-mile road course. On their final lap as the checkered flag waved, Taylor crossed the stripe just ahead of Tandy, who couldn’t gain enough advantage of any draft effect to claim the pole.
“When you’re head-to-head with a guy like Nick Tandy, you really need to make the most of it,” Taylor said. “He’s a guy that I’ve grown up watching and respected, so I knew I had to be nailing everything and on my ‘A’ game. I’m glad it worked out.”
Cooper MacNeil qualified a cautious third in the #79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19 that underwent significant repairs after catching fire Sunday in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. MacNeil and co-driver Matt Campbell used Thursday’s lone practice session and qualifying to work out issues in the car and focus on race performance.
Llarena Claims First IMSA Pole in LMP3
Mateo Llarena claimed the pole for Performance Tech Motorsports in Le Mans Prototype 3 (LMP3), putting the #38 Ligier JS P320 for him and teammate Rasmus Lindh at the head of the class with a lap of 1:42.633 (119.259 mph), the team having a brand new engine shipped to Watkins Glen after disaster struck last weekend.
“It was quite good,” Llarena said. “We didn’t expect to get it because we were struggling … with the changing conditions. So, we really didn’t know like where we would start. I pushed all the way. The car was great and I managed to get a very good lap.”
Jon Bennett and Colin Braun will start second in LMP3 with the #54 CORE autosport Ligier.
Snow Storms to Pole in GT Daytona
It didn’t matter to Madison Snow that conditions were at their most treacherous for GT Daytona (GTD) grid position qualifying on Thursday. He was in charge of the entire 15-minute segment when the track was its wettest from earlier rain to win the Motul Pole Award.
Snow’s final lap in the #1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3, 1:59.380 (102.529 mph) was nearly a half-second clear of the GTD field and earned Snow the fourth pole position of his IMSA career and first since 2017. Using wet-condition Michelin tires, he topped the speed chart nearly throughout and punctuated it with his last lap. Afterward, he applauded the team’s move for the grooved wet tires, while some in the 12-car class struggled on dry-condition slicks.
“I went out the first couple laps, got quite a bit of heat in (the tires) and did a decent time,” Snow said. “Then I took two laps to cool off the tires because I had too much to keep pushing. So that last lap I was able to build more heat back in them because they heated up real quick with almost dry conditions out there.
“For me, it was kind of feeling what the tire had and just making sure you didn’t kill it, so that at the end of the session you still had something left.”
Frankie Montecalvo was second in the grid position qualifying session with a lap of 1:59.820 (102.153 mph) in the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. He and Snow were the only drivers to turn a lap in under two minutes.
In the ensuing 15-minute session to decide qualifying points under much drier conditions, Jack Hawksworth survived the frantic final minutes to set the fastest lap (1:46.988, 114.405 mph) and rake in 35 points toward the IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup standings. The lead changed five times in the final minute and after the checkered flag waved, as drivers pushed to the limit. Bill Auberlen, Zach Veach and Mario Farnbacher each took turns at the top until Hawksworth launched in with his best lap in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3.
Ross Gunn qualified the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 fifth in the points session. It gives Gunn and co-driver Roman De Angelis an unofficial 47-point lead over Montecalvo in the Sprint Cup standings, with Friday’s GTD race counting only toward the Sprint Cup and not the overall WeatherTech Championship.
The #19 GRT Lamborghini meanwhile will start from the back of the grid after losing all lap times from the session, a crew member having touched the car during the session.
