Filipe Albuquerque was the first driver into the 49s, then the first into the 48s, ultimately landing the pole for Sunday’s 2h40m IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race with a 1m48.601s lap and handing co-driver Ricky Taylor the birthday present he hoped to deliver. With the 134.19mph-average lap around the 4.048-mile, 14-turn Road America circuit, Albuquerque delivered pole for the No. 10 Acura ARX-06, and teammate Jordan Taylor was only 0.262s off in the No. 40 to fill the front row with Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acuras.
“The car felt really, really good — fine tweaking the car, front and rear, and just , because we always know that qualifying anyone can put a banger, especially in such a long track,” said Albuquerque, who said the car felt perfectly balanced, much like the ARX-05 DPi. “You have more time to make the difference. If you put the perfect lap in 14 corners, you can really make the difference. When you’re putting so much risk, you know you can lock and you can bail and then you miss the the peak of the tire.”
Chasing the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsports 963 in the points, Renger van der Zande put the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R on the inside of the second row courtesy of a 1m48.920s lap. The best of the Porsche contingent, Gianmaria Bruni will starts alongside van der Zande in the No. 5 Proton Competition 963. The third row will be the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R (Pipo Derani) and the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 (Connor de Phillippi).
Dane Cameron took the championship-leading No. 7 PPM 963 off track early in the session, and ended up with the slowest time of the GTP cars that took part. The No. 24 BMW, which had a high-speed off in the Kink Saturday morning, did not emerge from the paddock to set a time.
LMP2 qualifying produced two impressive stories. One — PJ Hyett scoring his fourth consecutive pole aboard the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA. The second — Ben Keating, who had a big hit in the morning practice session, qualifying alongside on the front row. Not only did it require a herculean effort by the United Autosports crew to get the No. 2 ORECA back together, but Keating visited the care center before being cleared.
Move over LMP2 contenders — AO Racing just won’t quit, especially at a circuit that’s so sentimental to the whole team. Richard Dole/Lumen
Hyett turned a 1m53.778s lap (128.13mph) to best Keating by 0.372s.
“Road America is actually pretty special to us because it’s effectively our home race for AO Racing,” noted Hyett, still looking for his first race victory. “We’re based in the Chicagoland area, but even if it wasn’t our home race, I absolutely love this racetrack. This is the first track that I ever drove a P2 car , 12 months ago, so it’s special on a number of levels. In fact, I was telling the NBC folks that my grandfather taught me how to drive about 100 miles from here in the rolling hills of Wisconsin, so everything is special about what’s happening today. For me to be able to put the car on pole here is really a dream come true.”
Dan Goldburg qualified the No. 22 United Autosports ORECA third at 1m54.129s, while the CTMP-winning No. 52 Euro Interpol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA will start outside the second row courtesy of Nick Boulle. The third row will be the No. 88 AF Corse ORECA qualified by Luis Perez Companc and the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA driven by Steven Thomas.
In his first time qualifying at Road America, Nicky Catsburg shattered the GTD PRO track record to take the overall GT pole as Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports locked out the front row, and all 10 GTD PRO cars qualified ahead of all the GTD cars for the first time.
Catsburg is riding the Corvette wave on the heels of the team’s CTMP success, and the new GT3.R was a rocket ship at Road America on Saturday. Jake Galstad/Lumen
Catsburg’s 2m02.198s lap (119.26mph) in the No. 4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R was 0.194s ahead of teammate Alexander Sims in the No. 3, and bested Alex Riberas’s previous record, set last year in the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3, by more than a second.
“We have some good momentum going on with the team right now,” said Catsburg. “ coming from our one-two qualifying in Canada and a race one-two, so it’s been going really well. We got the car really dialed in today before qualifying. We made some some last-minute setup changes and it worked really, really well for us, so super pleased with that. We have big backing here from from Oshkosh, one of our main sponsors. They’re all here, so it’s good for us to kind of put on a show and be P1 and P2. A great job by the whole team, and hopefully tomorrow we can repeat what we did in Canada, but I feel like it’s going to be more difficult here.”
In Conquest Racing’s second GTD PRO attempt, and the first weekend in which the team is running a Ferrari 296 GT3 in both GTD PRO and GTD, Giacomo Altoe will start the No. 35 Ferrari on the inside of the second row, courtesy of a 2m02.729s lap. Jack Hawksworth put the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 on the outside of row two with a 2m02.912s. The No. 64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 (Mike Rockenfeller) and the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports McLaren 720 GT3 Evo (Oliver Jarvis) will make up the the third row.
Mikael Grenier put the No. 32 Korthoff Preston Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3 on the GTD pole with a 2m03.634s lap. Zacharie Robichon will start the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo alongside the No. 32 after posting a 2m03.764s time.
Grenier says the Korthoff Preston team is due for a turnaround after snatching the GTD pole. Jake Galstad/Lumen
“We’ve struggled a bit this year,” said Grenier, who will be sharing the car with Kenton Koch for the first time in a sprint race. “We did a few mistakes and I think this weekend we’ve put a weekend together. Have to see in the race tomorrow, because it’s obviously quite different. We made some strategy mistakes this year, so hopefully we can fix that. We are a bit slow on the straight, so I guess in traffic it might be difficult, but we’ll see.”
Onofrio Triarsi, in Triarsi Competizione’s first race outside the Michelin Endurance Cup, qualified the No. 023 Ferrari 296 GT3 in third with a 2m03.841s lap, with Patrick Gallagher starting the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 alongside.
The third row of GTD will be Russell Ward aboard the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG on the inside and Danny Formal in the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 on the outside.
Sunday’s race is scheduled for a green flag at 3:10 p.m. ET.
RESULTS
