American Le Mans Series

Acura secures front-row sweep at Mid-Ohio

© American Le Mans Series

Qualifying for the Acura Sports Car Challenge of Mid Ohio took place today and like a week ago it turned out to be a thriller. The LMP1 and LMP2 qualifying records were trashed as Acura secured the front row and de Ferran Motorsports won its first pole position.

Right from the word go in the LMP session the cars went for pole position and it soon became clear that the fastest lap time would be in the 1:08 or even 1:07 range. Three LMP cars (one of the Audi R10s, a Penske Porsche and a Dyson Porsche) were given penalties which resulted in less qualifying time for them. But as they waited to get out, the action on the track heated up.

The provisional pole time kept going down and the pole sitter was a different driver almost every time one of the Acura’s, Audi’s or Porsches crossed the line. While the focus for most people was on David Brabham in the Patrón Highcroft Racing Acura after his win last weekend at Lime Rock it was another Acura that took the honours today. Brazilian owner/driver Gil de Ferran was the only driver capable of doing a 1:07.969 in the last minutes. The other drivers were unable to use the momentum in their final lap and as the chequered flag came out several cars went into the pit lane rather than finishing a lap, while others were unable to match the #66 lap time.

Marco Werner was the best of the five LMP1 cars entered at Mid-Ohio. The German was fifth overall, still only four tenths of a seconds from pole position. The complete top seven of the LMP qualifying session were within a second of each other.

Johnny O’Connell took the #3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C6.R to pole position in the GT1 class. The American beat team-mate Olivier Beretta by 0.429s. Both Corvettes did six laps in the 20-minute long qualifying session, but the #4 was unable to match the 1:17.900 set by the #3.

In GT2 the Farnbacher Loles Racing of Dirk Werner was on provisional pole position for most of the session. Jaime Melo in the #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 430 GT had his mind on the pole position. In his first attempt he was unable to catch the German, on his second attempt he ran wide and collected a lot of dirt and grass on his radiator. But on his final attempt, with just two minutes remaining, the Brazilian really pushed his Ferrari to the limit. As he crossed the line the clock showed 1:20.025, which meant pole position went to the Risi Ferrari. Eventually there were seven cars in about a second from each other.

1 - 66 P2 de Ferran Motorsports (de Ferran) 1:07.969
2 - 9 P2 Patron Highcroft Racing (Brabham) 1:08.193
3 - 7 P2 Penske Racing (Bernhard) 1:08.238
4 - 26 P2 Andretti Green Racing (Montagny) 1:08.320
5 - 2 P1 Audi Sport North America (Werner) 1:08.357
6 - 15 P2 Lowe’s Fernandez Racing (Diaz) 1:08.507
7 - 1 P1 Audi Sport North America (Capello) 1:08.960
8 - 6 P2 Penske Racing (Maassen) 1:09.614
9 - 16 P2 Dyson Racing Team (Dyson) 1:09.912
10 - 20 P2 Dyson Racing Team (Leitzinger) 1:10.029
11 - 37 P1 Intersport Racing (Field) 1:11.053
12 - 30 P1 Intersport Racing (Lewis) 1:11.156
13 - 12 P1 Autocon Motorsports (McMurry) 1:16.316
14 - 3 GT1 Corvette Racing (O’Connell) 1:17.900
15 - 4 GT1 Corvette Racing (Beretta) 1:18.329
16 - 62 GT2 Risi Competizione (Melo) 1:20.025
17- 87 GT2 Farnbacher Loles (Werner) 1:20.199
18 - 45 GT2 Flying Lizard Motorsports (Henzler) 1:20.226
19 - 71 GT2 Tafel Racing (Farnbacher) 1:20.324
20 - 46 GT2 Flying Lizard Motorsports (Pilet) 1:20.703
21 - 61 GT2 Risi Competizione (Friesacher) 1:20.844
22 - 44 GT2 Flying Lizard Motorsports (Pechnik) 1:21.072
23 - 21 GT2 Panoz Team PTG (Milner) 1:22.133
24 - 40 GT2 Robertson Racing (Murry) 1:23.139
25 - 18 GT2 VICI Racing (N. Pastorelli) 1:23.388
26 - 54 GT2 Black Swan Racing (Lazzaro) 1:23.729
27 - 73 GT2 Tafel Racing (Tafel) 1:24.047
28 - 11 GT2 Primetime Race Group (Hall) 1:24.957

The #007 Drayson-Barwell Aston Martin Vantage and #8 B-K Motorsports Lola did not take part in qualifying.