IMSA Laguna Seca starting lineup: Porsche Penske Motorsport continued its torrid run in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, capturing the pole position for the Motul Course de Monterey with the No. 7 Porsche 963 co-driven by Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr.
Campbell turned a lap in 1 minute, 14.774 seconds that nipped Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche 963 by 0.090 seconds in the premier Grand Touring Prototype category for the hybrid cars.
“It came from just digging a little deeper and fine-tuning the car a little more,” Campbell told the IMSA Wire Service. “We made a few small changes just to try and smooth some things out, and it really worked better than expected, to be honest. It’s been a fantastic weekend, topping every session so far.”
STARTING GRID: Click here for the Laguna Seca starting lineup l By car number
IMSA AT LAGUNA SECA: Details for watching Sunday’s race
The No. 6, which is co-driven by Campbell and Nick Tandy, scored the first victory for Porsche Penske Motorsport last month in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (where Jaminet and Nasr were third).
Colin Braun qualified third in the No. 60 Acura ARX-06 of Meyer Shank Racing, followed by Pipo Derani in the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R of Whelen Engineering Action Express, Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura and Sebastien Bourdais in the No. 01 for Cadillac Racing.
“Really good job by everyone at Meyer Shank, Acura, and HPD,” Braun said. “We rolled off the truck well, top two or three in every session, but it seems as though the Porsches had good, peak pace. We missed by just a little bit, which was honestly closer than I thought it would be. I’m pretty happy about it. It’s a long race and there will be a lot to play out.”
Said Derani: “I’m quite happy with this qualifying. I think I extracted everything I could from the car. Sometimes you come away with a pole position and you’re like ‘oh, I think we could have done better,’ and today we came away with P4 and I think my lap was quite good. Obviously, we wanted to be a little bit further up the grid but it’s very tight. I think we have a very good car for the race, especially thinking long stints and tire deg.”
The BMW M Team RLL hybrid prototypes qualified on the fourth row. In its debut with a customer Porsche 963, JDC Miller MotorSports’ No. 5 qualified ninth.
Here are the pole-sitters in other categories for the race on the 11-turn, 2.238-mile road course:
LMP2: George Kurtz, No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing ORECA LMP2 07, 1:19.262
GTD Pro: Klaus Bachler, No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, 1:24.529
GTD: Alex Udell, No. 92 Kellymoss with Riley Porsche 911 GT3 R, 1:24.539
QUALIFYING
Fastest lap by driver after qualifying
Fastest lap by driver and class after qualifying
PRACTICE RESULTS: Session I l Session II