Road America IMSA: Taylor sweeps to pole, Ford on top in GT
Ricky and Jordan Taylor will start this weekend’s WeatherTech Sportscar Championship race at Road America from pole position for Cadillac, outpacing the rest of the field by over a second.
Taylor lapped the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing-run Cadillac DPi-V.R in 1m53.058s, and despite his dominance the battle for second behind him was intense between Jose Gutierrez (PR1/Mathiasen Ligier), Scott Sharp’s Nissan DPi, Marc Goossens (Ligier), Johannes van Overbeek (Nissan) and Eric Curran (Action Express Cadillac).
Taylor said: “The car was just beautiful, but I think tomorrow will be a different story. There’s a lot of good cars out there. We’ve had a few frights about how we can lose points recently, and we want to wrap this championship up as soon as possible – that’s the big goal.
“We’ve been lower downforce than Daytona at every track this year [due to performance balancing], and normally Daytona is as low as you can go, but our guys keep finding ways of going fast.”
Christian Fittipaldi will start the #5 Action Express Cadillac from down in seventh, ahead of Misha Goikhberg’s JDC-Miller Oreca LMP2.
Ford tops GT from BMW
Dirk Muller scored his second GTLM pole position on the trot around Road America for the Chip Ganassi-run works Ford GT outfit.
He lapped the #66 Ford in 2m01.422s, 0.781s faster than the sister #67 car of Ryan Briscoe, who lapped in 2m02.203s.
“I’m really happy,” said Muller. “The Ford Chip Ganassi boys work so hard, we have something open from last year – we had to fix a problem before the start, so it’s unfinished business.
“I really love it here at Road America, and it was tough this weekend because the track time was limited with all the rain.”
Alexander Sims will start third for BMW, lapping his M6 0.789s shy of Muller, with Gianmaria Bruni fourth for Porsche in the #912 machine that took pole last time out.
Martin Tomczyk qualified the second BMW fifth in class, ahead of Patrick Pilet in the #911 Porsche and the Chevrolet Corvettes of Oliver Gavin and Jan Magnussen.
Jeroen Mul led the way in GT Daytona in the #16 Charge Racing Lamborghini Huracan, ahead of Jesse Krohn’s Turner-run BMW and Patrick Linsey’s Park Place Porsche 911.
James French was the only Prototype Challenge driver to dip under the two-minute barrier for Performance Tech Motorsports, almost 3s clear of his two rivals.
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