American Le Mans Series

Patrón Highcroft looking forward to the race at Road America

© American Le Mans Series

Today’s qualifying session for Sunday’s Generac 500 at Elkhart Lake’s Road America, Round 7 of the 2008 American Le Mans Series, may not have produced the precise result the Patrón Highcroft Acura team was looking for, but driver David Brabham feels the team is in good shape for tomorrow’s race.

Brabham’s teammate, Scott Sharp, will start Highcroft’s LMP2 Acura sixth tomorrow, even though Brabham qualified less than three-fourths of a second slower than the new track record of 1:46.935 (136.277mph) set by pole winner Lucas Luhr in the LMP1-class Audi R10.

“Our speed in the last practice session before qualifying gave us a lot of hope,” noted Brabham, “because we had tried a lot of different things in yesterday’s test session that didn’t quite work out. Today we had a completely different setup on the car, and were able to fine-tune one steady-state setup; the guys did a fantastic job because it just got better and better.

“We were second overall and fastest in our class in the last practice session,” Brabham continued, “and in qualifying we just missed a little bit of grip getting into the apex. I’m not too disappointed, though, because in terms of setup I feel we’ve got a better race car than a qualifying car. We proved that the consistency and the lap time are there all the time with the Michelin tires, and I think we’ve got a setup that will work very well for a long period, and it’s a four-hour race.”

Qualifying times for Sunday’s Generac 500 at Road America

1. Lucas Luhr/Audi R10 1:46.935/136.277mph
2. Franck Montagny/Acura ARX-01b 1:47.345
3. Marcus Fassler/Audi R10 1:47.579
4. Adrian Fernandez/Acura ARX-01b 1:47.639
5. Romain Dumas/Porsche RS Spyder 1:47.736
6. David Brabham/Acura ARX-01b 1:47.774