Long Beach IMSA: Castroneves and Tandy win pole positions
Helio Castroneves earned pole position for the BUBBA Burger SportsCar Grand Prix at Long Beach with a brilliant 1min11.332sec laptime for Acura Team Penske.
Prototype pole winner #7 Acura Team Penske Acura DPi, DPi: Helio Castroneves
Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images
Castroneves, a four-time IndyCar Long Beach polesitter, was over 0.2sec faster than his closest opposition, the Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R of Felipe Nasr, in the #7 Acura ARX-05.
That was over half a second quicker than his third-placed teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, who took pole for this event last year.
Joao Barbosa made a late improvement to slot the second AXR Cadillac into fourth place.
Jonathan Bomarito appeared to have a chance of taking pole but understeered his #55 Mazda RT24-P into the tires exiting Turn 6 after clipping the inside wall, although he remained over a quarter-second faster than teammate Tristan Nunez.
Jordan Taylor, who had his appendix removed earlier this week and for whom Kamui Kobayashi was on standby as sub, was a brave seventh fastest in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac ahead of the similar cars of JDC-Miller and Juncos Racing.
In GT Le Mans, Nick Tandy produced a 1min16.313sec in the #911 Porsche 911 RSR to win pole, just 0.064sec ahead of teammate Laurens Vanthoor, who made a slight mistake on his final flying lap when he appeared to be heading for P1.
Corvette Racing’s Oliver Gavin was 0.2sec behind in third, beating IndyCar ace Sebastien Bourdais in the #66 Ford GT, the Frenchman subbing for the unwell Joey Hand.
Antonio Garcia slotted the second Corvette into fifth ahead of Ford fulltimer Ryan Briscoe in the #67 Ford, while the two BMW M8 GTEs of Tom Blomqvist and John Edwards brought up the rear.
Qualifying results:
Pos. | Num | Driver | Class | Chassis | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 7 | Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor |
DPi | Acura DPi | 1'11.332 | |
2 | 31 | Pipo Derani Felipe Nasr |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'11.550 | 0.218 |
3 | 6 | Juan Pablo Montoya Dane Cameron |
DPi | Acura DPi | 1'11.847 | 0.515 |
4 | 5 | Filipe Albuquerque Joao Barbosa |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'11.870 | 0.538 |
5 | 55 | Harry Tincknell Jonathan Bomarito |
DPi | Mazda DPi | 1'11.884 | 0.552 |
6 | 77 | Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez |
DPi | Mazda DPi | 1'12.147 | 0.815 |
7 | 10 | Jordan Taylor Renger van der Zande |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'12.312 | 0.980 |
8 | 84 | Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'12.455 | 1.123 |
9 | 85 | Mikhail Goikhberg Tristan Vautier |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'12.650 | 1.318 |
10 | 50 | Kyle Kaiser Will Owen |
DPi | Cadillac DPi | 1'12.694 | 1.362 |
11 | 54 | Jon Bennett Colin Braun |
DPi | Nissan DPi | 1'13.389 | 2.057 |
12 | 911 | Nick Tandy Patrick Pilet |
GTLM | Porsche 911 RSR | 1'16.313 | 4.981 |
13 | 912 | Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor |
GTLM | Porsche 911 RSR | 1'16.377 | 5.045 |
14 | 4 | Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner |
GTLM | Chevrolet Corvette C7.R | 1'16.520 | 5.188 |
15 | 66 | Sébastien Bourdais Dirk Muller |
GTLM | Ford GT | 1'16.662 | 5.330 |
16 | 3 | Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia |
GTLM | Chevrolet Corvette C7.R | 1'16.685 | 5.353 |
17 | 67 | Ryan Briscoe Richard Westbrook |
GTLM | Ford GT | 1'16.874 | 5.542 |
18 | 25 | Connor de Phillippi Tom Blomqvist |
GTLM | BMW M8 GTE | 1'17.021 | 5.689 |
19 | 24 | John Edwards Jesse Krohn |
GTLM | BMW M8 GTE | 1'17.236 | 5.904 |
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