Record pole for Mazda at the 24 Hours of Daytona

With the additional power granted to the DPi and the Michelin tires which replaced Continental, we expected to see records fall. Oliver Jarvis takes pole position for the 2019 edition of the 24 Hours of Daytona thanks to a lap completed in 1'33"685. The Briton, who shares the wheel of the No. 24 Mazda RT77-P with Tristan Nunez, Timo Bernhard and René Rast, beat last year's pole position by 2"3 and the previous record for the series by 0"190. track, owned since 1993 by PJ Jones at the wheel of a Toyota Eagle MkIII.

Alongside him on the front row, Jarvis will find Ricky Taylor, entered in the No. 05 Acura ARX-7 with Helio Castroneves and Alexander Red. The American, who conceded 0 to the reference mark, was ahead of his teammate Juan Pablo Montoya (Acura ARX-188 no. 05) and the Mazda no. 6 of Jonathan Bomarito. The top five is completed by the No. 55 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-VR, entrusted during this session to outgoing champion Felipe Nasr. The latter precedes the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac at the wheel of which we find Jordan Taylor, Renger van der Zande, Fernando Alonso et Kamui Kobayashi.

The first LM P2, the #07 DragonSpeed ​​Oreca 81 of James Allen-Nicolas lapierre-Ben Hanley-Henrik Hedman is tenth. Using a strategy that worked last year, Core Autosport decided to put their gentleman Jon Bennett behind the wheel for qualifying. The American lifted the #54 Nissan Onroak to 13th place, 3” from pole. Nothing to worry about, the 2018 vice-champion team is already in its race.

Nick Tandy, with his Porsche 911 RSR in Brumos colors, made the GTLM talk. The Briton, who teamed up with Patrick Pilet and Frédéric Makowiecki, took pole thanks to a lap completed in 1'42"257. The Corvette C7.R n°3 (Magnussen-Garcia-Rockenfeller), the No. 67 Ford (Briscoe-Westbrook-Dixon) and the Ferrari 488 GTE n°62 (Rigon-Calado-Molina-Pier Guidi) follow at 0 »326, 0 »377 and 0 »455 respectively. The best BMW, the No. 24 of J. Krohn-J. Edwards-Mostert-Zanardi, is seventh at 0.

In GTD, pole position was taken by Marcos Gomes, who shares the No. 488 Via Italia Racing Ferrari 3 GT13 with Victor Franzoni, Chico Longo and Andrea Bertolini. In 1'45"257, he was 0"067 ahead of the Mercedes AMG-GT3 n°33 from Riley Motorsports entrusted to Jeroen Bleekemolen, Ben Keating, Luca Stolz and Felipe Fraga and by 0”139 the Acura NSX GT3 n°86 from Farnbacher-Hindman-Marks-Allmendinger.

The day is not over, since the competitors will be entitled this evening at 1:30 a.m. (French time) to a third free practice session, at night, lasting 1h30.