IMSA starting lineup for Petit Le Mans season finale at Road Atlanta: Felipe Nasr wins pole

By Nov 13, 2021, 8:00 AM EST
IMSA Petit Le Mans starting lineup
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IMSA starting lineup: Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani tightened the DPi championship race heading into the season finale, qualifying first Friday for the Petit Le Mans season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Nasr turned a lap of 1 minute, 8.678 seconds in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac, earning the maximum 35 points for the Action Express team. Nasr and Derani now trail by eight points in the premier division standings to the Wayne Taylor Racing No. 10 Acura of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque, who qualified seventh.

“I actually had a dream a few nights ago that I would get the pole,” Nasr said. “It was tough going up the hill into the sun, it was blinding. I managed to keep it on the track and get the pole. The Action Express Racing team is really dialed in and focused this weekend. Pipo and (third driver) Mike (Conway) are motivated and we are ready for the race.”

IMSA PETIT LE MANS: Details for watching Saturday’s race

STARTING LINEUP: By position l By number

Said Albuquerque: “Last qualifying of the year and I felt quite confident in the car to throw everything I had at it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. Obviously, we have something going on this weekend that is atypical for us. We seem to be missing something on the car that is not enabling us to run close to the other Acura car.

“We’re just hoping that we can solve this thing and that we find it before the race is over. 10 hours is a long race. We’re holding on and we never give up.”

Harry Tincknell qualified second in the No. 55 Mazda, which is making its final start as the automaker exits DPi. Sebastien Bourdais was third in the No. 5 Cadillac, followed by Kevin Magnussen (No. 01 Cadillac) and Dane Cameron (No. 60 Acura).

Magnussen reportedly will be replaced by Earl Bamber in the race because of illness.

Kamui Kobayashi was sixth in the No. 48 Ally Cadillac of Action Express with co-drivers Jimmie Johnson and Simon Pagenaud.

It was an emotional pole-winning news conference for Nasr, who is racing for the final time at Action Express before moving onto a new team and manufacturer as the IMSA WeatherTech Championship Series transitions into the LMDh category in 2023.

“I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the emotions come until after the checkered flag drops,” Nasr said. “That shows how much respect and love I have for the team. They took me in as family when I joined halfway through 2017. They’re just a big family to me. … This is something that will always remain. It will be sad to leave them.

“There is so much on the line and you just want to deliver. I had a lot of fun. Wow; it’s a great car to drive. … It was all about getting the tires correctly in the window and bringing them up and just nailing those laps.”

In other classes, the pole winners were:

GTLM: Jesse Krohn, No. 24 BMW Team RLL M8 GTE, 1 minute, 15.226 seconds

GTD: Madison Snow, No. 1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3, 1 minute 19.272 seconds

LMP2: Ben Keating, No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07, 1 minute 12.229 seconds

LMP3: Niklas Kruetten, No. 2 United Autosports USA Ligier JS P320, 1 minute, 15.664 seconds

Click here for the starting grid in the IMSA Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta and here for the starting lineup by number.

QUALIFYING:

Click here for the DPi/LMP2 results

Click here for GTLM results/GTD points

Click here for the GTD position results

Click here for the LMP3 results

PRACTICE

Click here for Session I l Session II l Session III

IndyCar Detroit GP starting lineup: Alex Palou wins first pole position on a street course

By Jun 3, 2023, 4:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT — Alex Palou won the pole position for the second consecutive NTT IndyCar Series race and will lead the Detroit Grand Prix starting lineup to green on a new downtown layout.

The 2021 series champion, who finished fourth in the 107th Indy 500 after qualifying first, earned his third career pole position as the first of three Chip Ganassi Racing drivers in the top four (Scott Dixon qualified fourth, and Marcus Ericsson sixth).

Scott McLaughlin will start second, followed by Romain Grosjean. Coming off his first Indianapolis 500 victory, Josef Newgarden qualified fifth.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

It’s the third career pole position for Palou and his first on a street course — a big advantage on a nine-turn, 1.645-mile track that is expected to be calamitous over 100 laps Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC).

“It’s going to be a tough day for sure,” Palou told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “It feels good we’ve had a great car since the beginning, and it was just about maximizing. They did a great strategy on tires and everything. We need to finish it (Sunday).

“I got off a lot in practice. We wanted to see where the limit was, and we found it. It’s a crazy track. I think it’s too tight for Indy cars and too short as well, but we’ll make it happen.”

QUALIFYING RESULTS: Click here for Detroit GP qualifying speeds | Round 1, Group 1 | Round 1, Group 2 | Round 2 l Round 3

The narrow quarters (originally listed as a 1.7-mile track, its distance shrunk by a couple hundred feet when measured Friday) already were causing problems in qualifying.

Colton Herta, who has four career poles on street courses, qualified 24th after failing to advance from the first round because of damage to his No. 26 Dallara-Honda. It’s the worst starting spot in an IndyCar street course race for Herta (and the second-worst of his career on the heels of qualifying 25th for the GMR Grand Prix three weeks ago).

Andretti Autosport teammate Kyle Kirkwood also found misfortune in the second round, damaging the left front of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda despite light wall contact.

“I’m disappointed for the crew because that was a pole-winning car,” Kirkwood told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “Man, I barely touched the wall. I touched it way harder in all the practices, and it’s just like the angle at which the wall was right there, it caught the point and just ripped the front off the car.

“If the wall was rounded, that wouldn’t have happened. That’s just unfortunate for the guys, but it’s my mistake. It’s hard enough to get around this place let alone race around it. We’ll see how it goes.”

Many IndyCar drivers are expecting it to go badly, which isn’t uncommon for a new street layout. The inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee, was the biggest crashfest of the 2021 season with 33 of 80 laps run under caution plus two red flags.

It could be worse at Detroit, which is the shortest track on the IndyCar circuit. It also features the series’ only split pit lane (with cars pitting on opposite sides and blending into a single-lane exit), a 0.9-mile straightaway and a hairpin third turn that is considered the best passing zone.

“If there’s one day you need to be lucky in the year, it’s tomorrow,” Grosjean told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns. “A lot is going to happen, and it’s being in the right time at the right place.”

Said Dixon: “Expect probably a lot of unexpected things to happen. We’ll try and get through it. I think it’ll be similar to Nashville and maybe the last man standing is the one who gets the victory.”

With the field at 27 cars, Palou estimated the length of the course leaves a gap of about 2.4 seconds between each car, which he preferred would be double. During practice Friday, there were six red flags and 19 local yellows as teams tried to sort out the tricky and tight layout.

“I don’t know what the perfect distance is, but I would say adding 30 seconds to a track or 20 seconds would help a lot,” said Palou, one of many drivers who also said the streets were too bumpy despite work to grind down some surfaces. “We have a lot of cars. It’s crazy. It’s really good for the series, for the racing. But when it comes to practice, and we have 10 red flags, 25 yellows, it’s traffic all the time.”

It seems certain to be a memorable reimagining of the Detroit GP, which was moved downtown by IndyCar owner Roger Penske after a 30-year run at the Belle Isle course a few miles north.

McLaughlin, who drives for Team Penske, believes the race will be very similar to Nashville, but “it’s just going to be up to us with the etiquette of the drivers to figure it out along the way. I think there’s going to be a lot of passes, opportunities.

“With the track, there’s been a lot of noise I’ve seen on Twitter, from other drivers and stuff,” McLaughlin said. “At the end of the day, this is a new track, new complex. I think what everyone has done to get this going, the vibe is awesome. Belle Isle was getting old. We had to do it.

“First-year problems, it’s always going to happen. It’s just going to get better from here. The racetrack for the drivers is a blast. We don’t even know how it races yet. Everyone is making conclusions already. They probably just need to relax and wait for (Sunday).”

Here’s the IndyCar starting lineup for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (qualifying position, car number in parentheses, driver, engine and speed):

ROW 1

1. (10) Alex Palou, Honda, 1 minute, 1.8592 seconds (95.734 mph)
2. (3) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 1:02.1592 (95.271)

ROW 2

3. (28) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 1:02.2896 (95.072)
4. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 1:02.4272 (94.862)

ROW 3

5. (2) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 1:02.5223 (94.718)
6. (8) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 1:02.6184 (94.573)

ROW 4

7. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 1:02.1817 (95.237)
8. (60) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 1:02.1860 (95.230)

ROW 5

9. (6) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 1:02.1937 (95.219)
10. (5) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 1:02.2564 (95.123)

ROW 6

11. (11) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 1:02.2958 (95.063)
12. (27) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 1:04.6075 (91.661)

ROW 7

13. (7) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 1:02.5714 (94.644)
14. (21) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 1:02.1911 (95.223)

ROW 8

15. (20) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 1:02.9522 (94.071)
16. (77) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 1:02.2644 (95.111)

ROW 9

17. (29) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 1:03.0017 (93.997)
18. (45) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 1:02.6495 (94.526)

ROW 10

19. (55) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 1:03.1599 (93.762)
20. (78) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 1:02.9071 (94.139)

ROW 11

21. (18) David Malukas, Honda, 1:03.2126 (93.684)
22. (14) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 1:02.9589 (94.061)

ROW 12

23. (06) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 1:03.3879 (93.425)
24. (26) Colton Herta, Honda, 1:03.4165 (93.383)

ROW 13

25. (30) Jack Harvey, Honda, 1:03.7728 (92.861)
26. (51) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 1:03.7496 (92.895)

ROW 14

27. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 1:03.8663 (92.725)