Mazda and Porsche on pole for the 24 Hours of Daytona

Dominant at the Roar, at the beginning of the month, thanks to Olivier Pla, the No. 77 Mazda proves that it is indeed the car to beat in pure performance. At the wheel, Oliver Jarvis has just taken pole position for the 24 Hours of Daytona, the opening round of theIMSA SportsCar Championship.

The Briton completed a lap in 1'33"711. Enough to take pole, but not to beat his own record: 1'33"685. The ex-Audi driver put 0”443 on Juan Pablo Montoya (Acura ARX-05 n°6) and 0”458 on the other RT24-P, led for the occasion by Jonathan Bomarito. Felipe Nasr (Cadillac DPi-VR n°31 – Action Express Racing) and Ryan Briscoe (Cadillac DPi-VR n°10 – Wayne Taylor Racing) complete the top five.

The only Frenchman who took part in this session, Tristan Vautier (Cadillac DPi-VR n°85 – JDC Miller MotorSports) is sixth. Note that a red flag brought a premature end to qualifying following Ricky Taylor's violent exit from the track. Although the American fortunately escaped unscathed, his No. 05 Acura ARX-7 – Team Penske was heavily damaged.

Engaged in GTD on the Mercedes-AMG GT3 n°74 from Riley Motorsports and in LM P2 in the Oreca 07 n°52 from PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, Ben Keating took pole position in LM P2.

In GTLM, Porsche confirmed his good intentions by monopolizing the first row. Author of a lap in 1'42"207 (new GTLM record), Nick Tandy took pole position in the No. 911 19 RSR-911 which he shares with Frédéric Makowiecki and Matt Campbell. Laurens Vanthoor concedes 0 »049 to his teammate while the two Corvette C8.Rs follow at 0 »338 and 0 »594, the n°3 of Antonio Garcia having been faster than the n°4 of Tommy Milner. Followed by the two BMW M8 GTE and the Ferrari 488 GTE n°62 of Risi Competizione, curiously relegated to 1”4.

Zacharie Robichon took GTD pole position in 1'45"237 at the wheel of the No. 911 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 3 GT9 R which he shares with Patrick Pilet, Dennis Olsen and Lars Kern. The Canadian was ahead of Jeff Westphal (Ferrari 0 GT476 no. 488 – Scuderia Corsa) and 3 champion Trent Hindman (Acura NSX GT63 no. 2019 – Heinricher Racing / MSR) by 3 seconds.

Tomorrow, light program with only one free practice session, at 15:50 p.m. (French time). As a reminder, the start of the 58th edition of the 24 Hours of Daytona will be given at 19:35 p.m. on Saturday.