After finishing third at Detroit and second at Watkins Glen International in the two most recent Tudor United SportsCar Championship races, OAK Racing came to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park looking to step up to the top of the victory podium.
After leading both of Friday’s practice rounds, Gustavo Yacaman took another giant step toward achieving that goal on Saturday, running a lap of 1:09.167 (127.986 mph) to give the team its second consecutive Prototype class Pole position.
“Of course, our goal is to win,” Yacaman said. “We’re a race-winning team, and we haven’t won yet. Hopefully, everything will go our way tomorrow. There are many variables in motorsports, and everything has to go your way in order to win.”
Olivier Pla is co-driving with Yacaman this weekend.
“Here it is very important to be on the pole,” Yacaman said. “We definitely have an aero(dynamic) advantage, but we have a big power disadvantage. It’s going to be a matter of managing traffic, which is very difficult at this track with the massive speed difference in the high-speed corners.”
Ryan Dalziel topped the final pratice session earlier in the day but could only qualify second fastst but completed an all P2 front row with a lap of 1:09.456 (127.453 mph) in the #1 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b/Honda co-driven by Scott Sharp. Qualifying third was Richard Westbrook, who joined Michael Valiante in winning the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen two weeks ago. He ran a lap of 1:09.642 (127.113 mph) in the #90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP.
Both the #31 Marsh Racing Corvette DP of Boris Said and Eric Curran, and the #0 DeltaWing DWC-13 of Katherine Legge and Andy Meyrick were withdrawn from the event after the cars were damaged in separate incidents late in Friday afternoon practice.
Said suffered a broken rib in the DPs shunt whilst Meyrick was lucky to escape with minor facial burns after the DeltaWing burst into flames after a fuel line ruptured. The damage for the #0 car included delamination of the tub that was too severe to repair this weekend.
The GT classes meanwhile (no LMPC class this time around) saw a unique Viper double pole as Kumo Wittmer put the #93 Dodge Viper GTSR onto pole in GTLM with a lap in 1:15.206, less than a tenth ahead of the #3 Corvette of Antonio Garcia with Wolf Henzler putting the #17 Falken Tire Porsche into an excellent 3rd slot on the grid alongside Oliver Gavin’s #4 Corvette.
Despite being a track regular throughout his career this is Wittmer’s first career pole position at the track:
“It’s still giving me some goose bumps,” he said. “If you look back, the first time I ran around this track I was 16 years old. Personally this is a big achievement and it’s a dream come true.”
“I believe we have a little bit of an edge here. We need to go into tomorrow with a proper plan. It’s far from being won, but I know our team is very, very strong with strategies and I know we’ll do something really nice tomorrow.”
In GTD meanwhile it was Jeroen Bleekemolen who put the #33 Viper Exchange Dodge Viper GT3-R onto class pole (1:19.004), thus securing the first double GT pole for any manufacturer in TUSCC thus far and the first class pole for the new for 2014 GTD spec car.
“It was a great achievement for the whole team because it is a new project,” said Bleekemolen, who earned the 16th pole of his career. “It’s a new build for this year. We’ve been a bit unlucky in the races, we’ve shown already we have some speed in other events. Finally we were able to put it on pole.”
Starting second will be the #94 Turner Motorsport BMW Z4 GTE qualified by Dane Cameron after a lap of 1:19.175. Cameron will again be joined by co-driver Markus Palttala. The duo recently won the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International.
Mario Farnbacher was third in the #23 Heart of Racing/ AJR Porsche 911 GT America with a lap of 1:19.213. The #45 Flying Lizard Motorsports Audi R8 LMS originally qualified second, but will start from the rear of the field Sunday when post-qualifying technical inspection revealed a ride-height infraction.
Photos: Regis Lefebure
