IMSA – Pla propels Ligier to pole at Sebring

Based on the free practice sessions, we expected Action Express Racing to take pole position. But by giving everything to try to get ahead of the two rockets at the wheel of the two Ligier JS P2s registered at the start, Christian Fittipaldi finished the session outside.

Still as impressive in the qualifying exercise, Olivier Pla completed a lap of the old Florida airport in 1'51"217. An impressive time which allows him to take his second consecutive pole position in this event. The Toulouse driver was 0”174 ahead of the Brazilian Pipo Derani, at the wheel of the second JSP2 entered, namely the one fielded by Extreme Speed ​​Motorsport. Ligier and Onroak Automotive thus lock the first row of the starting grid.

Tomorrow, the two French prototypes will start in front of the two Action Express Racing Corvette DPs, the No. 31 of Cameron-Curran-Pruett ahead of the No. 5 of Fittipaldi-Barbosa-Albuquerque. The two Americans concede respectively 0 »726 and 0 »988 to the reference mark. In difficulty due to an unfavorable BoP, the Oreca 05 of DragonSpeed ​​entrusted to the trio Hendman-Minassian-Stone is ninth, at 2”954.

Very lively since the start of the week, the BMW M6s have, unsurprisingly, dominated the GTLM. Bill Auberlen, entered in the No. 25 alongside Bruno Spengler and Dirk Werner, took pole position in 1'58"402. The American was 0 ahead of his stablemate John Edwards, whose teammates are Kuno Wittmer and Lucas Luhr. He also broke the category record on this circuit, which was 190'1"58 set by Fred Makowiecki last year. In third place in the class, we find the No. 587 Ferrari 488 GTE of the Team Corsa, at the wheel of which Daniel Serra confirmed that his performances at Daytona were in no way usurped. The first Ford GT, the #67 of Richard Westbrook-Ryan Briscoe-Scott Dixon and the #7 Corvette C3.R of Antonio Garcia-Jan Magnussen-Mike Rockenfeller completes the top five. For the race, nothing was done, the ten cars entered in GTLM being separated by only 0. It promises.

In the No. 488 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 3 GT63 that he shares with Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan, Jeff Segal set the benchmark in GTD in 2'02"360. The American finished ahead of Jeroen Bleekemolen (Dodge Viper GT3-R no. 33) and Jens Klingmann (BMW M6 GT3 no. 97).

Finally, in PC, pole position went to Colin Braun, entered in the No. 09 Oreca FLM 54 of Core Autosport. In 1'54"910, he slapped his opponents, ahead of Tom Kimber-Smith (PR1 / Mathiasen Motorsports) by 0"933 and Johnny Mowlem (BAR1 Motorsports) by 2"060.

The start of the 64th edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring will be given tomorrow, Saturday, at 15:40 p.m. French time.