Long Beach IMSA: Castroneves and Tandy win pole positions

Castroneves, a four-time IndyCar Long Beach polesitter, was over 0.2sec faster than his closest opposition, the Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R of Felipe Nasr, in the #7 Acura ARX-05.

That was over half a second quicker than his third-placed teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, who took pole for this event last year.

Joao Barbosa made a late improvement to slot the second AXR Cadillac into fourth place.

Jonathan Bomarito appeared to have a chance of taking pole but understeered his #55 Mazda RT24-P into the tires exiting Turn 6 after clipping the inside wall, although he remained over a quarter-second faster than teammate Tristan Nunez.

Jordan Taylor, who had his appendix removed earlier this week and for whom Kamui Kobayashi was on standby as sub, was a brave seventh fastest in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac ahead of the similar cars of JDC-Miller and Juncos Racing.

In GT Le Mans, Nick Tandy produced a 1min16.313sec in the #911 Porsche 911 RSR to win pole, just 0.064sec ahead of teammate Laurens Vanthoor, who made a slight mistake on his final flying lap when he appeared to be heading for P1.

Corvette Racing’s Oliver Gavin was 0.2sec behind in third, beating IndyCar ace Sebastien Bourdais in the #66 Ford GT, the Frenchman subbing for the unwell Joey Hand.

Antonio Garcia slotted the second Corvette into fifth ahead of Ford fulltimer Ryan Briscoe in the #67 Ford, while the two BMW M8 GTEs of Tom Blomqvist and John Edwards brought up the rear.

Qualifying results:

Pos.	Num	Driver	Class	Chassis	Time	Gap
1	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor	DPi	Acura DPi	1'11.332
2	31	Pipo Derani Felipe Nasr	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'11.550	0.218
3	6	Juan Pablo Montoya Dane Cameron	DPi	Acura DPi	1'11.847	0.515
4	5	Filipe Albuquerque Joao Barbosa	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'11.870	0.538
5	55	Harry Tincknell Jonathan Bomarito	DPi	Mazda DPi	1'11.884	0.552
6	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez	DPi	Mazda DPi	1'12.147	0.815
7	10	Jordan Taylor Renger van der Zande	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.312	0.980
8	84	Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.455	1.123
9	85	Mikhail Goikhberg Tristan Vautier	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.650	1.318
10	50	Kyle Kaiser Will Owen	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.694	1.362
11	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun	DPi	Nissan DPi	1'13.389	2.057
12	911	Nick Tandy Patrick Pilet	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	1'16.313	4.981
13	912	Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	1'16.377	5.045
14	4	Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner	GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	1'16.520	5.188
15	66	Sébastien Bourdais Dirk Muller	GTLM	Ford GT	1'16.662	5.330
16	3	Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia	GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	1'16.685	5.353
17	67	Ryan Briscoe Richard Westbrook	GTLM	Ford GT	1'16.874	5.542
18	25	Connor de Phillippi Tom Blomqvist	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	1'17.021	5.689
19	24	John Edwards Jesse Krohn	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	1'17.236	5.904