IMSA - Bourdais Puts Cadillac Racing and Ganassi On Pole at Indy

Conditions were oppressive for Saturday’s late afternoon qualifying session for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, with an ambient temperature of 89 degrees and heat indices in the mid-90s.

Sebastien Bourdais and the No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R were best at beating the heat to top the times overall and for the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class. Bourdais claimed the Motul Pole Award for Sunday’s six-hour endurance race with a lap timed at 1 minute, 14.592 seconds (117.712 mph).

A gaggle of dedicated spectators baked in the sun on the viewing mounds lining the 2.439-mile road course’s opening sequence of corners and at the end of the backstretch, while others sought shade in the covered grandstands high atop Turn 1 of the IMS oval. They saw Bourdais put on a clinic as he earned his seventh pole in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship action.

Bourdais is also a former sports car race winner at Indianapolis, sharing in a Daytona Prototype class win with Alex Popow in 2012. It was his first pole in 22 attempts at Indianapolis, spread across sports cars and Indy car races on the Speedway’s road course and iconic oval.

“Not a great record, huh? 22 attempts!” joked the 45-year-old Frenchman. Obviously it’s always great to be on pole, and it’s a very nice feeling to do it at the home base of Chip Ganassi Racing,” Bourdais continued. “It helps us to stay alive in the championship fight, which is obviously a long shot. But we live to fight another day, and that’s very much the spirit we have for the rest of the season. That Cadillac was quite good today.”

Bourdais and co-driver Renger van der Zande last started from the pole in May at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Their most recent WeatherTech Championship race win was just prior to that in Long Beach.

The No. 01 Cadillac duo arrived at Indianapolis ranked third in the GTP championship points standings behind a pair of Porsche Penske Motorsport entries. The championship-leading No. 7 Porsche 963 of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron qualified seventh at IMS, while the team’s No. 6 entry earned the third starting spot.

Louis Deletraz and Jordan Taylor (No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06) earned the outside front row starting spot with a lap of 1:14.817 (117.358 mph), 0.225-seconds off Bourdais’ best lap.

Bourdais believes that traffic will be the biggest issue in Sunday’s race, which for the first time is a round of the IMSA Michelin Endurance Championship. There’s also a possibility of rain.

“We really didn’t know where we stood after practice because qualifying was the only time that we were able to string two or three laps together,” he said. “The density of the traffic, with 56 cars on track, is just insane. That was the big unknown, going into qualifying, and it was a big guessing game. So, we pretty much decided to just trust the read we had from when we tested here a month or so ago and had the track to ourselves. There was no way to know anything else from the practice we had. We just stuck to our guns, and it was definitely challenging because the tires got hot really quick and the window to get a lap in was not very wide.”

LMP2: Boulle Earns First Career Pole, Extends Points Lead

In Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2), Nick Boulle and Tom Dillmann unofficially extended their lead in the class point standings from 27 to 38 as Boulle claimed the Motul Pole Award. They will be joined behind the wheel this weekend by Jakub Smiechowski.

Boulle was the only LMP2 driver to break the 1 minute, 18-second barrier, clocking a tour of 1:17.618 (113.122 mph) in the No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 to earn his first career pole in IMSA competition. The lap was 0.461-seconds quicker than the second-fastest LMP2 qualifier, Steven Thomas in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA.

Boulle’s three fastest laps in the 15-minute LMP2 session would have been good for the top spot.

“To be perfectly honest, I think we’ve struggled in qualifying through the year, just in terms of finding that magic lap, or getting the tires in the right window,” Boulle said. “And we found it. That was certainly a special lap, one that I will remember for a long time. Every lap in the car I feel like I learn something,” he added. “I think this place in particular rewards being aggressive, but it’s very detail oriented in terms of how you just touch the curbs, using every bit of track at certain points. I think that lends itself well to me. Where you get to push here makes it a really fun place to drive, and I have enjoyed it.”

Ben Keating qualified third in class in the No. 2 United Autosports USA ORECA, while Boulle and Dillmann’s closest rival in the championship chase, the No. 74 Riley ORECA shared by Gar Robinson and Felipe Fraga, will start seventh.

Results are HERE