Bourdais steals pole at Mid-Ohio for Cadillac

The 43-year-old Frenchman earned his fifth career WeatherTech Championship pole (and third of the 2022 season) at a track where Cadillac’s Daytona Prototype international (DPi) competition from Acura have dominated, taking four consecutive Mid-Ohio wins.

Although they won earlier this year on the streets of Long Beach, Bourdais, co-driver Renger van der Zande, and the No. 01 Cadillac Racing team have been frustrated by niggling technical issues, the occasional driver error, and a solid dose of bad luck to start the campaign.

That allowed championship points co-leaders Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque (No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura DPi) and Oliver Jarvis and Tom Blomqvist (No. 60 Meyer-Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura DPi) to build a 121-point cushion to the No. 01 Cadillac duo, who rank sixth in the standings. Bourdais’ pole-winning effort Saturday shaved a few points off that margin.

It hasn’t been a trouble-free weekend for the 01 – the drivers lost key practice time on Friday when the car suffered an electrical glitch that affected shifting. But Bourdais is hopeful for a clean race.

“I think it’s the first time this year we had a problem in practice instead of a race,” said Bourdais, who also claimed the pole position at Mid-Ohio in 2019 in the GT Le Mans class. “The car has been really, really quick all year long, we execute and work well together as a team, and then on race day things just go haywire.

“I hope we’ve been through enough bad things and now we can get ourselves on a roll and drag ourselves back into the championship.”

Prototype qualifying took place in a light mist, creating slippery conditions that ensured the Mid-Ohio IMSA lap record of 1:10.027 (116.080 mph) established by Harry Tincknell in a Mazda DPi in 2021 was unchallenged.

Albuquerque qualified the No. 10 Acura on the outside of the front row with a 1:10.661 (115.039 mph) lap, while Jarvis incrementally improved his speed three times in the closing minutes of the session but will line up third with a time of 1:10.791 (114.827 mph).

Bourdais said that the Cadillac Racing team have been consistently improving the car, but he was still somewhat at a loss to explain how Cadillac qualified fastest at a track where Acura has generally set the pace.

“We really didn’t have much hope of taking the fight to those guys, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the race,” he said. “One thing about the Cadillac side is we’re never holding back. We have three different teams going at it, so the series always sees the very, very best of that car.”

Kelly Slides Way to Seventh Career LMP2 Pole

Patrick Kelly displayed again why he is a Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) qualifying expert, collecting the Motul Pole Award by nearly a full second in mixed track conditions – even after he flat-spotted a tire on the No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 on his first full lap. It is the seventh LMP2 pole position for Kelly since he joined the series in 2019.

Despite wounding the right front tire early, Kelly was never seriously threatened in qualifying. His best lap of 1:14.340 (109.345 mph) came on his ninth trip around the 2.258-mile circuit and was an eye-popping 0.936 seconds up on teammate Steven Thomas in the No. 11 PR1 Mathiasen ORECA.

“It was raining and I was driving like an idiot,” Kelly said of the initial gaffe on the track that was wet on the front half and dry on the back half. “… The track got better. Halfway through the session, it came back to conditions we had early.

“I slid the car all over the track,” added Kelly, who’s paired with teenager Josh Pierson in the No. 52 for the LMP2 sprint races. “I pitched that car into every corner. This track I think of as a little like (WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca). It’s about precision. But once it got wet, it was all bets are off for me and I drove differently.”

Thomas will line up on the LMP2 front row alongside Kelly for the race start, with Jonathan Bomarito the second driver in the No. 11. Henrik Hedman qualified the No. 81 DragonSpeed USA ORECA in third. Hedman has driven every lap in the No. 81 thus far this weekend while co-driver Juan Pablo Montoya drives in the IndyCar Series race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Montoya is expected at Mid-Ohio in time for Sunday’s 8:40 a.m. ET warmup session.

Andretti’s Gift to Graduating Sister? LMP3 Motul Pole Award

It didn’t matter that Andretti Autosport missed the entire first practice session in Le Mans Prototype 3 (LMP3) due to a faulty oil pressure sensor the day before. Jarett Andretti made up for it in qualifying on Saturday, earning his second Motul Pole Award – and first in a traditional qualifying format – in the No. 36 Ligier JS P320.

Andretti turned a best lap of 1:17.104 (105.426 mph) in the LMP3-only session when track conditions were at their best between smatterings of rain during the GT Daytona (GTD) and DPi/LMP2 qualifying segments that took place before and after the LMP3 session.

“We kind of got in that perfect window,” Andretti said. “When the GT cars went out there, it was still a bit wet and they dried it up completely. We got our session in and then it started to rain pretty hard. Kind of worked out perfectly for us. Last year with our luck it would’ve rained during our session … so maybe our luck’s turning around a little bit.”

Andretti and Josh Burdon won the LMP3 qualifying race for the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January to collect their first WeatherTech Championship pole. This time, Andretti did it on his own and at the track where he and the team made their series debut a year ago.

It also came on the same day that his sister Olivia graduated from medical school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Since Jarett couldn’t attend the graduation with the rest of the family, he offered the pole-winning effort as his gift.

“This one was for her,” Jarett said. “I’m really proud of her, really excited about that. Sad that they weren’t here but really pumped for her.”

Snow storms to second GTD pole of season in BMW

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GT Daytona (GTD) qualifying session for tomorrow’s Lexus Grand Prix at Mid-Ohio may have been delayed by half an hour, thanks to a lightning storm accompanied by a rain shower, but it was worth the wait.

On a rapidly drying track, the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing and No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3s traded fast times with the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 and No. 32 Team Korthoff Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3 throughout the session before Paul Miller’s Madison Snow secured the Motul Pole Award with a lap of 1:20.525, just two tenths of a second better than Stevan McAleer managed in the Mercedes-AMG.

Although Mid-Ohio’s Keyhole turn (Turn 2) was decidedly damp in the opening minutes of the session – occasioning agricultural excursions by the No. 70 inception racing McLaren and the No. 17 Vasser Sullivan Lexus – the pavement soon dried. But it wasn’t until the final moments of the 15-minute session that lap times really tumbled, a fact that Snow put down more to cool track temperatures than a drying track.

“With the cool track, it took a lot of laps for the tire pressures and temperatures to come up,” he said. “So, you just had to keep pushing, pushing every lap.”

The fact that every trip through the Keyhole was a step into the unknown – with changing conditions each time around – made it all the more challenging.

“It wasn’t until the last two or three laps that the Keyhole was consistent from lap to lap,” said Snow. “Having a spotter there and another watching the end of the straightaway really helped, because they could watch the other cars and report where they were braking. Still, when the Keyhole was slippery it was hard to trust that you could carry your braking deep into Turn 3.”

Heart of Racing Team’s Roman De Angelis posted a best lap of 1:20.822 to claim third spot, while defending GTD Mid-Ohio winner Robby Foley slotted the Turner BMW into fourth on the grid with a 1:21.012 – just ahead of the No. 57 Windward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Russell Ward at 1:21.016.

If qualifying is any measure, the GTD standings could be in for a shake-up, as the championship-leading No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R qualified 16th today, even as the No. 32 Winward Mercedes-AMG and No. 96 Turner BMW – second and third in points at the moment – start from the first two rows. Then again, Wright Motorsports’ Ryan Hardwick and Jan Heylen came from 11th on the GTD grid to a class win at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca a fortnight ago.

Can Wright Motorsports stage a repeat of their Laguna Seca magic? Or will Mid-Ohio produce a different winner and a new leader in the GTD championship standings?