Audi bounced back from Porsche’s domination at the Nürburgring last month to score pole position for the FIA World Endurance Championship round in Mexico City with the no. 8 R18 car shared by Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi.
Duval and di Grassi teamed up to post a two-lap average of 1:25.069, good enough for Audi’s third pole position of the 2016 WEC season and the first for the no. 8 crew.
The Le Mans-winning no. 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid will line up second on the grid at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez as Neel Jani and Romain Dumas finished just 0.042 seconds behind.
Audi’s no. 7 car shared by Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler qualified third, two-tenths of a second further back. The pair will race without regular teammate Benoit Treluyer on Saturday, the Frenchman ruled out through injury.
Porsche’s no. 1 car was fourth ahead of the pair of Toyota TS050 Hybrids, the no. 5 finishing within nine-tenths of a second of the pole time.
In LMP2, the RGR Sport by Morand team enjoyed a memorable maiden home qualifying session by taking pole position with its no. 43 Ligier Nissan.
Ricardo Gonzalez and Bruno Senna posted a combined average of 1:35.485 to finish three-tenths of a second clear at the top of the timesheets. The no. 43 Signatech Alpine entry was second ahead of the no. 42 Strakka Racing Gibson-Nissan.
Aston Martin Racing enjoyed a sweep of the GTE classes, locking out the front row in Pro with its no. 95 and no. 97 cars.
Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen combined for a two-lap average of 1:40.458, edging out the sister AMR entry by one-tenth of a second. The no. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE was half a second further back in third place.
The no. 98 Aston Martin Vantage V8 shared by Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana swept to pole in GTE Am, finishing four-tenths clear of the no. 88 Abu Dhabi Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR.
The FIA WEC 6 Hours of Mexico kicks off at 1:30pm local time on Saturday in Mexico City.
Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.
Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.
On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.
One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.
After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.
The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.
Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.
Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports
“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.
“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”
As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.
But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.
A block pass by Haiden Deegan led to a series of events that eventually led to Jordon Smith failing to make the Main. – Feld Motor Sports
“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.
“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”
Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.
“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.
“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”
The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.
