OAK Racing tops TUDOR qualifying, as upsets lurk for Sunday's race
Three of the four fastest Prototype cars are P2 entries.
#42 OAK Racing Morgan: Olivier Pla, Gustavo Yacaman
Michael Tan
Could we be looking at a couple of upsets in Sunday’s TUDOR United SportsCar Challenge?
If today’s qualifying is an indication, we could indeed.
This has been a disappointing season for the two-car Tequila Patron team fielded by Extreme Speed, with drivers Ryan Dalziel, Ed Brown, Scott Sharp and Johannes van Overbeek, as their cars have consistently run atop the P2 field in the Prototype class, but have generally been overrun by the Daytona Prototypes, especially the Chevrolet Corvettes.
At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park near Toronto, though, the 2.459-mile track seems especially accommodating to the HPD ARX-03b chassis and engine, as Dalziel/Sharp and Brown/van Overbeek will start second and fourth on the grid. On the pole, though, is another P2 car – the OAK Nissan Morgan of Gustavo Yacaman and Olivier Pla (in the featured photo), which set a blistering time of 1 minute, .09167 seconds at 127.986 mph.
Breaking up the P2 party on the front two rows was the Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP, with drivers Richard Westbrook and Michael Valiente, which qualified third. The first three Prototypes all ran under 1 minute and 10 seconds, with Yacaman’s time a track record.
In the GT Le Mans class, driver Kuno Wittmer also set a track record with a lap of 1:15.206, at a speed of 117.709 mph in the factory SRT Dodge Viper, which he shares with Jonathan Bomarito. Second was the factory Corvette driven by Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia. The top seven GTLM qualifiers were only about a half-second apart.
And while it is a completely different car, Ben Keating’s privateer SRT Dodge Viper, driven in qualifying by Jeroen Bleekemolen, took the top spot in the GT Daytona class, the first time both GT classes have been dominated by Dodge Vipers.
The Prototype Challenge class isn’t racing at CTMP, leaving three classes with 39 entries. Just 37 cars are expected to start the race, though, as the Corvette DP of Marsh Racing was badly damaged in a crash with driver Boris Said, and the P2 Delta Wing suffered an onboard fire during practice, and could not be repaired in time to qualify. Driver Andy Meyrick suffered minor burns and blisters on his face.
The Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship will be in action on Sunday in a two-hour, 45-minute race. The field takes the green flag at 2:05 p.m. ET live on FOX Sports 1.
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