IMSA: Albuquerque Wins Pole at Long Beach

Filipe Albuquerque put Wayne Taylor Racing’s #10 Konica Minolta Acura on pole position, while Tom Blomqvist qualified second in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura.

GTP Qualifying had been delayed for over ten minutes while marshals and rescue crews cleaned up debris from an accident at the end of the preceding GTD qualifying session. The super eight hybrid prototypes took to the track but even to themselves, had some trouble finding an empty space on the course early on.

After eight minutes of Qualifying it became apparent that the Acuras would be able to back up their great form in Practice 1 and 2. Albuquerque took provisional pole, then was surpassed by Blomqvist seconds later.

On their next laps, Albuquerque took back the provisional pole with a lap of 1’10.428. Blomqvist had set a time of 1’10.489 that would have put him a few hundredths away, but the Anglo-Swedish driver had his lap time invalidated for encroaching over the pit exit line to his right.

While Blomqvist’s challenge for his second pole of the season fell away, Albuquerque continued to gain pace. He improved his benchmark time with a 1’10.371 for the best time of the day, and then, with less than two minutes left on the clock, the Portuguese speed merchant put it out of reach with a scorching time of 1’09.909 – enough to put himself and three-time Long Beach winner Ricky Taylor on the pole for tomorrow’s 100-minute sprint race.

Sebastien Bourdais piloted the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R to a P3 result. Defending race winners Chip Ganassi Racing will be looking for their fourth all-time victory at the event (2022; 2014; 2006) when the 100-minute clash kicks off Saturday at 5:05 p.m. ET on USA.

“It was a trying day for us. I think the cool temperatures hurt us quite badly. The Cadillac has been very good so far, though, taking care of conditions like this on a street course,” said Bourdais. “I’m pretty happy with the qualifying results, all things considered, and I know we can go racing from there.”

GTD-Pro

Returning to the streets of Long Beach, The Heart of Racing team (HOR) qualified to roll off from outside pole position for Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach behind the #14 pole sitting Vasser Sullivan Lexus.

Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas placed the No. 23 Heart of Racing GTD PRO entry at the top of the leaderboard for the first practice of the day. The Grand Prix of Long Beach reigning victors continued to lay down fast laps in the afternoon sun for second practice, ending the second practice with the fourth fastest lap.

Gunn qualified for the duo earning a top spot early on in the qualifying session. Just after his fastest lap was eclipsed by the #14 Lexus, the session went to red flag conditions for an incident on track, and did not restart as Gunn will open the 100-minute race from the outside front row of the GTD PRO grid.

Quotes

Filipe Albuquerque (#10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura ARX-06) Pole qualifier: “It was a tough qualifying, the grip just wasn’t there at the start of the session. That made it quite hard – harder than Daytona or Sebring, to be honest.  So, it was about being patient and waiting for conditions to be better.  We knew we had a good car, better than our competitors.  Both our car and the #60 were fast, so it’s a great day for Acura and our partners at HPD.”

Tom Blomqvist (#60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06): Qualified second: “We didn’t judge quite right for the track conditions, maybe looking a bit too much at the data from last year, and that didn’t really work on this car. The balance went away from us in the cool conditions and we struggled out there. P2 is a good result for Acura, especially at Acura’s home event. We’ve struggled here in the past, so hats off to everyone at HPD and MSR – they’ve done a great job. Our race pace is strong, we just need to stay out of trouble and see what that brings us.”

Ross Gunn No. 23 GTD PRO : “It’s a great result for the team because Marco was P1 and I was P3 overall, P2 in class. Everyone wants to be on pole but Marco delivered the lap and delivered the performance, he did an amazing job. Qualifying wasn’t very smooth for me – I really under-achieved, to be honest. I made a mistake which upset the rhythm a bit but having said that, we’re at the front, close to where we need to be to start getting points to come back in the championship. So at least we’re up at the sharp end. Tomorrow is about trying to pick up some good points because we are quite a long way behind in the championship, having had some bad luck so far this season. But we’ll be out there pushing tomorrow.”

Qualifying Results