IMSA – First pole for Montoya and Acura at Long Beach

Si Helio Castroneves had offered to Team Penske, last October in Petit Le Mans, his first pole position in IMSA SportsCar Championship, it is his teammate Juan Pablo Montoya who will remain the first man to have taken a pole position with the Acura ARX-05.

The Colombian, who shares the wheel of the No. 6 with Dane Cameron, completed a lap in 1'12"922. “ Acura and Team Penske did a great job this weekend “, declared the person concerned. Montoya was ahead of the No. 0 Cadillac DPi-VR fielded by Action Express Racing for Felipe Nasr-Eric Curran by 187 seconds and the No. 31 Mazda RT0-P of Jonathan Bomarito-Harry Tincknell by 234 seconds. Followed by the second Acura, that of Helio Castroneves-Ricky Taylor, the second Cadillac of Action Express Racing, assigned to the pair Filipe Albuquerque-Joao Barbosa, and that of Wayne Taylor Racing at the wheel of which we find Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande .

The first Nissan Onroak DPi, the #2 of Scott Sharp-Ryan Dalziel, is eighth, 1”2 behind. Despite a readjustment of the Performance Balance, all LM P2s are relegated to more than 1”7.

En GTLM, c’est Ford qui a pris le meilleur sur la concurrence. La GT n°67, confiée lors des qualifications à Joey Hand, a signé un 1’16 »869 qui lui permet de reléguer à respectivement 0 »144 et 0 »394 les Porsche 911 RSR n°912 (Earl Bamber-Laurens Vanthoor) et n°911 (Patrick Pilet-Nick Tandy). Si les deux Corvette C7.R suivent à 0 »4 et 0 »6, les deux BMW M8 GTLM ferment la marche après avoir concédé plus de 1 »2 à la marque de référence.

The start of the race, to watch on AUTOhebdo.fr, will be given at 1 a.m. French time next night.