IMSA: Jarvis wins pole at Mid-Ohio, Bourdais fastest in GTLM

By May 4, 2019, 3:30 PM EDT
Courtesy of IMSA
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Oliver Jarvis won the pole position for the Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course Saturday afternoon, beating out Helio Castroneves for the top spot despite slowing on the final lap.

Jarvis set the fastest lap of the session in the No. 77 Mazda Team Joest RT24-P, with an elapsed time of 1 minute, 10.705 seconds, narrowly edging out Castroneves in the No. 7 Acura Team Penske ARX-05 by 0.022 seconds.

“That’s a special pole because we know the Penskes are very strong here,” Jarvis told reporters following his pole run.

“I just gave it everything we got and to get [the] pole by a few hundredths [of a second] at the end, it’s a great start to the weekend.”

The qualifying session got off to an unusual start when Castroneves made contact with Pipo Derani in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac during his out lap. Castroneves’ car suffered minimal frontal damage.

Penske teammate Dane Cameron qualified third, with an elapsed time of 1 minute, 10.806 seconds.

Bourdais on Pole in GTLM

Sebastien Bourdais took the pole in the GT Le Mans class after an exciting qualifying session that saw the provisional pole go back and forth between Bourdais, who is subbing for Joey Hand in the No. 66 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT, and Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR.

The two drivers swapped positions on the leader board four times, with Bourdais finally posting an elapsed time of 1 minute, 19.124 seconds in his final flying lap of the session to edge out Vanthoor by 0.275 seconds.

Jesse Krohn qualified third in GTLM, with a fastest lap of 1 minute, 19.623 seconds in the No. 24 BMW Team RLL M8 GTE.

Heistand fastest in GTD

Richard Heistand won the pole position in GT Daytona, piloting the No. 14 AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 to the top of the class with an elapsed time of 1 minute, 24.281 seconds.

Ben Keating qualified second in the No. 33 Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 with a time of 1 minute, 26.109 seconds. Frank Montecalvo qualified third in AIM Vasser Sullivan’s second Lexus, the No. 12.

Marco Seefried brought out a red flag after his No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche went off-course. Seefried lost two of his fastest laps due to the incident, and him and teammate Patrick Long will start tomorrow’s race from the 36th and final starting position.

Masson leads in LMP2

Kyle Masson piloted the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports machine to the top spot in the two-car Le Mans Prototype 2 field, with an elapsed time of 1 minute, 14.877 seconds. Masson had no trouble taking the top spot as he was nearly seven seconds faster than his lone class competitor, Eric Lux, who could only post a fastest lap of 1 minute, 21.752 seconds after making contact with Dane Cameron’s No. 6 DPi during the session.

Click here for full qualifying results

Raceday coverage of the Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio begins Sunday at 1:30 P.M. E.T. on NBCSN.

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Alex Palou wins Detroit Grand Prix from pole

By Jun 4, 2023, 5:30 PM EDT
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DETROIT – Alex Palou won the IndyCar Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix from the pole, fending off several challenges and three late restarts during a chaotic debut for a new downtown track.

After qualifying first, Palou won by 1.1843 seconds in his No. 10 Dallara-Honda over Will Power, followed by Felix Rosenqvist, Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi.

Kyle Kirkwood (who rebounded from falling to 26th in a massive shunt on the first lap) finished sixth, followed by Scott McLaughlin, Marcus Armstrong, Marcus Ericsson and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden to round out the top 10.

As expected, there was lots of action on the nine-turn, 1.645-mile layout that made its debut Sunday with seven caution flags chewing up 32 of 100 laps – and eliminating some contenders.

With 20 laps remaining, Romain Grosjean slammed the wall in Turn 4 while running seventh in his No. 28 Dallara-Honda, which had started third. He later attributed the problem to a suspension failure.

Pato O’Ward’s shot at a decent finish fell apart during a green-flag pit stop on Lap 35. The No. 5 Dallara-Chevy’s left rear wheel was loose as O’Ward left the stall, so he stopped to allow the crew to push him back.

He returned in 26th at the end of the lead lap but then slammed the wall in Turn 9 eight laps later after overshooting the corner.

“Honestly our race went upside down on that pit stop,” O’Ward said. “All downhill from there. It is what it is.”

The yellow flew again during the next restart on Lap 49 as Sting Ray Robb went into the tire barrier in Turn 3 while Christian Lundgaard and Santino Ferrucci (who was trying to fight back onto the lead lap) also were caught scrambling in traffic.

During the caution, Graham Rahal hit the Turn 1 wall and then was rear-ended by rookie Benjamin Pedersen.

“I got a lot of understeer,” Rahal said, struggling to process what had happened to lose control of his No. 15 Dallara-Honda. “It’s on me. I need to see the tape and understand. I’m just disappointed in myself with all the errors this weekend, just not driving well. It’s hard to figure out why, but ultimately it’s on me. I’ve got to perform a heck of a lot better than that, especially on a day like this.

“It’s just not typical of me. I know you’ve got to stay on the dance floor. I don’t know what to say. We weren’t good in the race. We were in pretty bad shape. It’s disappointing. I’ve got to be better. It’s been a really tough couple of months. We need a reset. I need a reset. We need to come back much, much stronger.”

The first incident occurred in the first corner as Callum Ilott rear-ended Kyle Kirkwood on the entry into the Turn 3 hairpin (starts and restarts for the race occurred on the longest straightaway off Turn 2).

Kirkwood, who was starting after clipping the wall in qualifying, was able to continue after pitting to change the rear wing of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda.

But Ilott’s day was over after failing to complete a lap.

“I didn’t have anywhere to really go, but it was my bad for kind of being a little bit on the late side,” the Juncos Hollinger Racing driver told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “I was gaining bit of time, and they just checked up a little bit more than I anticipated the last bit. I wasn’t coming with that much more speed, but I just couldn’t slow it down on the last part, so sorry to the team and sorry to Kyle cause that didn’t help him, either. On to the next one.”

After four consecutive weeks of racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and on the streets of Detroit, IndyCar will take a one-week break before returning June 18 at Road America.