Acura Team Penske locked out the front row in qualifying for the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship race from Laguna Seca with Juan Pablo-Montoya in the #6 Acura ARX-05c setting a 1:15.174 that beat out his teammate Helio Castroneves by 0.159 seconds.
“I really took my time building the tyres up,” Montoya said. “I knew that as it gets hotter, the peak of the tyres gets narrower so I just wanted to make sure the front tyres were working and when I felt I had a good balance I knew I had two laps, I got a decent lap in and then I put a really good lap together.”
The #77 Mazda RT-24P of Oliver Jarvis was third with a 1:15.411.
Pipo Derani in the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R. was fourth quickest with a time of 1:15.420.
In GTLM, Jordan Taylor drove the #3 Corvette C8.R to a new qualifying track record and the fifth pole position of the season for the team with a lap time of 1:21.483. It’s a big step towards securing the team’s and driver’s championship which Taylor and Antonio Garcia can do this weekend.
It’s more of a championship-focused weekend. We’ve got a competitive car; we saw that right out of the box. We led both practice sessions and obviously now led qualifying, so the car is definitely quick and has pace. I think the race is going to be a much different story with tyre degradation,” Taylor said.
The #912 Porsche 911 RSR of Laurens Vanthoor ended the session in second, 0.242 seconds behind Taylor. Oliver Gavin, who announced he would step away from full-time racing yesterday, was third quickest in the session in the #4 Corvette C8.R.
The #911 Porsche 911 RSR did not set a competitive lap time after spending much of the session sitting in the pit lane. It was not clear why the team waited so long to go out on track.
Matt McMurry scored his first-ever GTD pole position with a 1:25.126 in the championship-contending #86 Meyer Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3. With their championship rivals starting the race in ninth and eleventh, that pole position is all the more important.
“The tyre degradation is so bad here that you really have to get it done on one lap. Any more and you’re just screwing yourself for the race. So that was the plan going in, just to warm it up slow and do one or two fast laps and park it,” McMurry said.
Just 0.014 seconds behind McMurry was Robby Foley in the #96 Turner Motorsports BMW M6 GT3. The #96 Turner BMW was the fastest car of the day yesterday but fell just short today.
Cooper MacNeil in the Weathertech-sponsored #63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 rounded out the top three in the class. The Ferrari has shown some decent pace since skipping the races at Mid-Ohio and the Charlotte ROVAL.
The most important thing to come from this qualifying session, though, could be the fact that the championship-leading #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R and the #14 AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC-F GT3, who are second in the title fight, had a dreadful session.
The #14 Lexus had to end their session early after a tyre began to go down. IMSA rules prohibit teams from touching the car, which includes changing the tyres. That meant the Lexus team could do nothing to fix the problem, leaving Aaron Telitz to sit in the pits as he fell down the order to eleventh.
The #16 Porsche, meanwhile, ended the session in ninth with Ryan Hardwick setting a lap time 1.045 seconds slower than McMurry’s pole time.
“That’s nice to hear, but I’m sure they’ll still be there the whole race,” McMurry said. “It’s nice to have quite a bit of padding between us and them.”
Patrick Kelly in the #52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA 07, by virtue of being the only LMP2 car in the race, secured pole position simply by setting a lap time. Kelly’s best time was a 1:20.060.
Pictures copyright and courtesy IMSA, Michelin Racing USA and Meyer Shank Racing.
