The #60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06 of Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun will start up front in Sunday afternoon’s IMSA TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Blomqvist grabbed his and the #60 MSR Acura’s first pole of the season, and their first pole since the 2025 Motul Petit Le Mans (Road Atlanta), in a qualifying session disrupted due to inclement weather.
Lightning strikes in proximity of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway led IMSA to abandon qualifying for the GTD Pro and GTD classes.
The grids for both GT classes will be set based on Teams’ championship standings, placing the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO on the pole in GTD Pro, and the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO on the GTD pole.
But GTP and LMP2 were able to commence their 15-minute time trials, and it was in the final two minutes of GTP qualifying where Blomqvist drove the #60 Acura to the top time with a 1:14.674.
The championship-leading #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R will start second; GTP points leader Jack Aitken set a 1:14.975 at the checkered flag to secure the outside of the front row and gain further ground on title challenger Laurin Heinrich.
Dries Vanthoor qualified third in the #24 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8 on a 1:15.073, followed by Louis Delétraz in the #40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac and Nick Yelloly in the #93 MSR Acura. Delétraz and Yelloly set identical times of 1:15.216, but the #40 Cadillac will start further ahead by virtue of setting the time first.
Julien Andlauer was sixth in the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, Filipe Albuquerque was seventh in the #10 WTR Cadillac, and Kévin Estre, Heinrich’s new co-driver, could manage only eighth in the #6 Penske Porsche.
Philipp Eng in the #24 WRT BMW and Ross Gunn in the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie rounded out the top ten on the grid, all within a second of the best time from Blomqvist.
In LMP2, Jeremy Clarke in the #43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA 07-Gibson grabbed his fourth pole position of the season in the final minutes of their 15-minute session.
Clarke’s best lap of 1:17.555 unseated Daniel Goldburg in the #22 United Autosports USA ORECA from the top spot. Goldburg’s best lap of the session was a 1:17.600, but that lap time was deleted after Paul di Resta brought out a red flag in practice earlier this week. No matter, Goldburg’s second-best time of 1:17.713 was good enough to retain second on the grid.
Hyett took third with a 1:17.770, ahead of Misha Goikhberg in the #52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen car in fourth.
Tobias Lütke in the #11 TDS Racing ORECA and George Kurtz in the #04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR ORECA will share the third row after qualifying fifth and sixth; Lütke recovered from a spin in turn one to set a solid lap in the final minutes.
That same fortune did not shine on John Farano, who spun in the Hulman Boulevard chicane and crashed his #8 Tower Motorsports ORECA. Farano was able to drive the car back to pit lane without causing a red flag, but he will start tenth and last on the LMP2 grid tomorrow.
Sunday’s Battle on the Bricks begins at 3:10 PM ET (local time), airing in over 210 countries on IMSA.tv and the official IMSA YouTube channel. Viewers in the United States can watch tomorrow’s race on free-to-air NBC and the Peacock streaming platform.
Images © Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
