The Cadillac V-Series.R has still won every GTP pole position in the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship – only this time, the quickest car was wearing yellow instead of red. Sébastien Bourdais in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac won the pole for Sunday’s Motul Course de Monterey, heading up an all-Cadillac front row of the grid.
The combination of a fresh track surface at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, and picture-perfect weather conditions in Northern California, made for a record-breaking set of qualifying sessions.
Dane Cameron in the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 was the first driver to dip under the old GTP course record at 1:14.058 before being usurped by Pipo Derani, the man who’d won all the poles this year in the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac. Derani improved to a 1:13.087, then a remarkable 1:12.658 with around five minutes left.
Yet it was Bourdais who saved his best for the final moments of GTP Qualifying. He drove past Derani into provisional pole with a 1:12.631, and on his next lap, the Frenchman put it out of reach with a sensational 1:12.445.
Bourdais had not only broken Matt Campbell’s previous GTP course record from last year by 2.3 seconds, but he’d also eclipsed the old DPi course record (a 1:13.924 from Ricky Taylor in 2022) by a second and a half.
As he said after qualifying: “You know the track temperature is going to come down and the grip is going to increase as the track is cleaning up and rubbering in. With the old pavement, you kind of only had one lap on the tyres – you had your chance and that was it. Now we can string laps together. It’s quite tricky because we never really have the chance to do it in practice because there is so much traffic. You’re just lucky and happy if you get one clean lap. It’s a difficult set of circumstances and it’s a lot of fun to really get the tyres into the groove.
“You really have to hang it out, and it’s really fun when you do put a lap that’s almost together,” he continued. “I had one lock-up up top and almost didn’t make the Corkscrew, but it’s always like that when you start challenging that braking zone. You know it’s going to make or break your lap time, and that was close to being a throwaway lap. So I’m very glad, because we could have lost several places when it’s so close.”
This was Bourdais’ seventh career IMSA pole, one that puts himself and Renger van der Zande in prime position to sweep the two California races after their win at Long Beach.
Derani’s streak of pole positions came to an end, he improved to a 1:12.557, but it wasn’t enough for his fourth straight IMSA pole. He and Jack Aitken will line up on the outside of the front row in Sunday’s two-hour, 40-minute sprint.
German marques locked out the second and third rows, headed by Philipp Eng in the #24 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 in third place, just 0.015s ahead of Mathieu Jaminet in the #6 Penske Porsche. Connor de Phillippi qualified fifth, ahead of Cameron in the #7 Penske Porsche.
The two Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06es will start on the fourth row – Ricky Taylor qualified seventh in the blue and black #10, ahead of Louis Deletraz in the red #40.
At the rear were the #85 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche of Tijmen van der Helm, and GTP newcomer Bent Viscaal – 10th in class, but within a second of the pole, aboard the #5 Proton Competition Porsche.
Matching the all-Cadillac front row in GTP, General Motors’ Chevrolet and Corvette labels did the same in GTD Pro – specifically, the two Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.Rs locked out the front row in class.
Nicky Catsburg gave the #4 Pratt Miller Corvette Z06 GT3.R its first-ever IMSA pole, with a best time of 1:19.727 – obliterating Jaminet’s previous GTD Pro course record from 2022 by almost 3.5 seconds.
Antonio Garcia was a close second in the #3 Corvette, with a 1:20.038.
“We really put our emphasis on qualifying,” said Catsburg. “We know track position is going to be important here. It’s a low-degradation track now. We put a lot of effort into it, and it worked. The car felt amazing, so it was pretty much just doing some laps and letting the time get toward me. It worked out.”
Behind that all-Corvette front row, the #9 Pfaff Motorsports McLaren GT3 EVO of Marvin Kirchhöfer qualified third, and in tomorrow’s race, all of the top three qualifiers are simply hoping to turn around what has been woeful starts to their respective 2024 seasons.
Jack Hawksworth, just coming off the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race a few minutes prior, qualified fourth in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 – ahead of Seb Priaulx in the #77 AO Racing “Rexy” Porsche 911 GT3 R.
GTD pole honours went to the rapid #45 WTRAndretti Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 of Danny Formal, who followed up the best time in Practice 2 with his first career IMSA pole.
The Costa Rican driver improved on his last two laps to take pole position with a final time of 1:20.866. He later went out and finished second in Race 1 of Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America.
Patrick Gallagher qualified second in GTD in the renumbered #557 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3, the position from which he and Robby Foley hope to commemorate Turner’s BMW race record with a win in their class.
Russell Ward qualified third in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, followed by veteran super-sub Spencer Pumpelly, fourth in the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3. Frankie Montecalvo was fifth in the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus.
The Motul Course de Monterey starts at 3:15 PM PDT (local time).
Images © Jake Galstad / IMSA
