Yacaman Captures First TUDOR Pole Award

Gustavo Yacaman

After finishing third at Detroit and second at Watkins Glen International in the two most recent TUDOR United SportsCar Championship races, OAK Racing came to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park looking to step up to the top of the victory podium.

After leading both of Friday’s practice rounds, Gustavo Yacaman took another giant step toward achieving that goal on Saturday, running a lap of 1:09.167 (127.986 mph) to give the team its second consecutive TOTAL Pole Award in Prototype qualifying for the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance (Sunday, FOX Sports 1, Live, 2 p.m. ET).

Alex Brundle gave the No. 42 Morgan/Nissan its first pole in qualifying at Watkins Glen International. Olivier Pla is co-driving with Yacaman this weekend.

“Of course, our goal is to win," Yacaman said. “We’re a race-winning team, and we haven’t won yet. Hopefully, everything will go our way tomorrow. There are many variables in motorsports, and everything has to go your way in order to win."

Based in Le Mans, France, OAK Racing is competing in the United States on a full-time basis for the first time in 2014 after winning the FIA World Endurance Championship LMP2 title in 2013.

“Here it is very important to be on the pole," Yacaman said. “We definitely have an aero(dynamic) advantage, but we have a big power disadvantage. It’s going to be a matter of managing traffic, which is very difficult at this track with the massive speed difference in the high-speed corners."

Ryan Dalziel qualified on the outside of the front row with a lap of 1:09.456 (127.453 mph) on the 2.459-mile, 10-turn circuit in the Extreme Speed Motorsports No. 1 Tequila Patr¢n HPD ARX-03b/Honda co-driven by Scott Sharp. Qualifying third was Richard Westbrook, who joined Michael Valiante in winning the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen two weeks ago. He ran a lap of 1:09.642 (127.113 mph) in the No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP.

Both the No. 31 Marsh Racing Corvette DP of Boris Said and Eric Curran, and the No. 0 DeltaWing DWC-13 of Katherine Legge and Andy Meyrick were withdrawn from the event after the cars were damaged in separate incidents late in Friday afternoon practice.

Sunday’s schedule opens with a 20-minute practice session at 9 a.m. ET.

Results