American Le Mans Series

Brabham takes pole for Long Beach Grand Prix

© Patrón Highcroft Racing

David Brabham secured the pole position for tomorrow’s Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach race as Acura dominated qualifying session on Friday afternoon. The Australian driver beat rival Gil de Ferran in the other Acura ARX-02a and will start from the front tomorrow. Adrian Fernandez completed an Acura top three.

In the first half of the session David Brabham and Gil de Ferran battled it out for the LMP1 (and overall) pole position. Both of the P1 Acura’s started in the 1:13s, but soon the lap times dropped. At the midway point Brabham posted a 1:11.627, a qualifying lap record at the Californian track. Gil de Ferran was almost one second back.

In the final couple of minutes the times and with Brabham in the pit the other teams improved their lap times. Gil de Ferran came a bit closer to Brabham, but with five minutes left on the clock the gap was still half a second.

On his first flying lap after coming out of the pit Brabham posted a 1:11.984 showing the de Ferran team that they needed more to take pole position. Gil de Ferran blasted through and posted a 1:11.699, only 0.072s behind Brabham. Unfortunately for the Brazilian he then spun at turn 1, clipped the wall and came to a halt on the wall. The red flags came out, effectively ending the qualifying session. As a result Brabham kept his fastest time and secured the pole position for Pátron Highcroft Racing.

Adrian Fernandez in his LMP2 Acura ARX-01b beat the two Dyson Racing Lola Mazdas in LMP2 and briefly posted the second fastest overall time. With just over three minutes remaining the Fernandez team was still in the box, with both Smith and Leitzinger closing in. The red flag interrupted the Dyson Racing progress and the team had to settle with second and third on the LMP2 grid. Smith was at 0.244s from Fernandez and Leitzinger at 0.385s.

In the GT qualifying session earlier on Olivier Beretta secured the pole position for the #4 Corvette C6.R for its final American Le Mans Series race. Beretta lapped the Long Beach streets in 1:17.952, just under two tenths of a second quicker than team mate Johnny O’Connell.

Seven minutes into the session the red flag briefly came out after Dominik Farnbacher’s Panoz Esperante stopped after hitting the wall at turn 9, damaging the left front of the car. The car had already lost lower rear bodywork after being hit from behind by the #3 Corvette when leaving the pits. Fortunately the car was towed away quickly and the session was restarted only a couple of minutes later.

The battle for the GT2 pole position was fought out between Jaime Melo in the Risi Ferrari F430 GT2, Patrick Long in the Flying Lizards Porsche 997 GT3 RSR and Wolf Henzler in the Farnbacher Loles Racing Porsche.

For half of the session Melo was on provisional pole but then Patrick Long went out for some quick laps. After beating Melo’s pole time twice (with a 1:20.577 the fastest lap time) and a third lap only 0.001s slower.

Despite running straight at turn 1 Jaime Melo stepped on it on the following laps and improved the fastest lap time by a couple of tenths of a second each lap. After posting a 1:20.3 the Brazilian eventually posted a 1:20.111. Henzler came in between Long and Melo when posting a 1:20.369.

With the Ferrari in the pit Long tried to take the pole once more but his final attempts were hampered by Joel Feinberg in the Primetime Race Group Viper who did not move over with the Porsche behind him. As a result Long was unable to beat Melo’s time and Risi Competizione secured the pole in GT2.