Daytona 24 Hours: Cadillacs dominate qualifying, Jani stars

Two-time series champion Joao Barbosa earned his first pole position for over two years, as he wound the AXR Cadillac around the 3.56-mile Daytona road course in just 1min36.903sec on his sixth and final lap in the Prototypes’ 15min segment.

His reigning champion teammate Dane Cameron fell just 0.07sec short of beating him, but more impressive still was Jani’s time, just 0.22sec from pole for Rebellion.

That was just enough to break up the Cadillac trio, as Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky Taylor scored fourth on the grid.

WTR’s Caddy was almost half a second clear of the Patron ESM Racing Nissan Onroaks DPis, Brendon Hartley 0.6sec ahead of Ryan Dalziel.

Stephen Simpson was seventh in the JDC-Miller Motorsports Oreca, with Tom Kimber-Smith eighth in the Ligier of PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports.

The two Mazda DPis of Jonathan Bomarito and Joel Miller completed the top 10, three seconds off pole-winning time, while Marc Goossens was the final qualifier in VisitFlorida Racing’s Multimatic Riley.

Loic Duval, who shunted the DragonSpeed Oreca in practice, did not make it to pitlane for a qualifying run.

James French prevailed to grab Prototype Challenge pole for what will probably prove to be the last time PC cars are seen in the Rolex 24 Hours.

French threw the Performance Tech Motorsports Oreca around the course in 1min42.559sec to decimate his nearest opponent by over eight tenths of a second.

That rival was the “unretired” Johnny Mowlem in BAR1 Motorsports’ #26 car, edging Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice by 0.12sec.

Chris Cumming was four seconds slower than French, but still managed to beat his Starworks teammate Alex Popow by a full second.

Cla	Num	Driver	Class	Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap
1	5	Christian Fittipaldi   Filipe Albuquerque   Joao Barbosa	P	Cadillac DPi	6	1'36.903
2	31	Mike Conway   Dane Cameron   Eric Curran   Seb Morris	P	Cadillac DPi	7	1'36.973	0.070
3	13	Stéphane Sarrazin   Nick Heidfeld   Sébastien Buemi   Neel Jani	P	ORECA	9	1'37.123	0.220
4	10	Jeff Gordon   Jordan Taylor   Ricky Taylor   Max Angelelli	P	Cadillac DPi	6	1'37.169	0.266
5	22	Bruno Senna   Brendon Hartley   Ed Brown   Johannes van Overbeek	P	Nissan DPi	9	1'37.609	0.706
6	2	Brendon Hartley   Pipo Derani   Scott Sharp   Ryan Dalziel	P	Nissan DPi	9	1'38.251	1.348
7	85	Mathias Beche   Mikhail Goikhberg   Chris Miller   Stephen Simpson	P	ORECA	9	1'38.915	2.012
8	52	R.C. Enerson   Tom Kimber-Smith   Jose Gutierrez   Mike Guasch	P	Ligier	9	1'39.149	2.246
9	55	Spencer Pigot   Jonathan Bomarito   Tristan Nunez	P	Mazda DPi	7	1'39.940	3.037
10	70	James Hinchcliffe   Tom Long   Joel Miller	P	Mazda DPi	8	1'39.973	3.070
11	90	René Rast   Marc Goossens   Renger van der Zande	P	Multimatic/Riley	7	1'40.532	3.629
12	38	James French   Nicholas Boulle   Kyle Masson   Patricio O'Ward	PC	ORECA FLM09	10	1'42.559	5.656
13	26	Johnny Mowlem   Adam Merzon   Trent Hindman   Tom Papadopoulos	PC	ORECA FLM09	9	1'43.396	6.493

CLICK HERE for complete qualifying results