American Le Mans Series

Patrón Highcroft starts from second at Mid Ohio

© American Le Mans Series

Fresh off the spectacular triumph of the team’s (and Acura’s) first overall win at the Northeast Grand Prix last weekend, David Brabham put the #9 Acura ARX-01b of Patrón Highcroft Racing on the front row of tomorrow’s race grid, clocking a best lap time of 1:08.193 in Friday evening’s qualifying session.. “I am really happy” said Brabham as he cooled down after the 20-minute session.

“Of course, after sitting on the pole at the Northeast Grand Prix last weekend, it would have been nice to have been on top again, but seeing how we were struggling throughout practice, running in sixth and seventh position, we feel really good about tonight’s result. It was a great climb to come up from where we were. The Acura was very good and we have no major issues. The Michelin tires have really performed consistently throughout the week. We’ll probably have a few small changes to the set-up for the race, but it was a great effort by the team to get us to where we landed and deliver a great car for qualifying. As far as traffic at the Mid-Ohio track, there are a couple of areas where it’s easy for someone to drop a wheel off the track and drag dirt onto the track, but it will definitely be easier than Lime Rock last week, so we should be in good shape for tomorrow’s challenge.”

“It was a good day for Patrón Highcroft Racing, “agreed Scott Sharp, David’s co-driver. “We made a lot of changes last night; the engineers really worked hard and weren’t afraid to roll the dice a little bit. The changes worked out really well - the car was markedly improved in this morning’s practice. As a result, David had a great run in the Acura ARX-01b for qualifying. Overall, things are going well this week, but traffic is tough out there - you can really get parked behind someone on this course. At Lime Rock, if you got stuck in traffic, you were done for a moment. Here, you have the potential to be stuck behind another car for three or four corners and lose seven or eight seconds. So along with our strong place on the grid, we’re also aiming for the right breaks in traffic to solidify our position.”

Qualifying Results

1 De Ferran Racing Gil De Ferran
2 Patrón Highcroft Racing David Brabham
3 Penske Racing Timo Bernhard
4 Andretti Green Racing Franck Montagny
5 Audi Sport North America Marco Werner
6 Lowe’s Fernandez Racing Luis Diaz