Photo: Rick Dole/IMSA
***Tom Blomqvist claimed his second consecutive IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship pole at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, both coming in Meyer Shank Racing-prepared Acura prototypes. Blomqvist’s pole lap in the GTP class Acura ARX-06, a 1:05.653, however, was 1.259 seconds slower than his time in the Acura ARX-05 DPi from last year.
***Blomqvist said: “Last year was a lot more of a wild ride. We’ve got a good car this year. It’s a bit more forgiving… We’ve made some subtle changes after Watkins. Acura/HPD have done a fantastic job. Both cars are seriously quick around here. Tomorrow we just need to get the job done.”
***Porsche Penske Motorsport struggled in qualifying, with fifth placed Felipe Nasr the best of the factory Porsche 963s and Mike Rockenfeller, in the privateer JDC-Miller Motorsports entry, out-qualifying Mathieu Jaminet. “We couldn’t do anything about the two Acuras today, but we had an outside chance for third place with the No. 7,” said PPM managing director Jonathan Diuguid. “The balance of the sister car was completely off in qualifying. Mathieu had no tyre grip at all on the front axle.”
***Gar Robinson recorded four laps in qualifying that all would have been good enough for LMP3 class pole, marking a dominant qualifying run by the Riley driver. Robinson and co-driver Felipe Fraga will be seeking their third consecutive series win on Sunday.
***The No. 80 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R underwent an engine change on Saturday morning, resulting in the Seb Priaulx and PJ Hyett-driven GTD entry missing the majority of Practice 2. Hyett completed several installation laps prior to the checkered flag. He qualified tenth in class, as the second-highest Bronze-rated driver behind Brendan Iribe in the No. 70 Inception Racing McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.
***A broken header on the No. 30 Jr III Racing Ligier JS P320 Nissan saw the Garett Grist and Ari Balogh-drive LMP3 entry miss more than half of Friday’s session, yet Grist still managed to top the time charts in both practice sessions, including a new class track record time of 1:11.766.
***The Gold-rated Canadian enters the weekend fifth in the LMP3 standings as a solo driver after Balogh elected to sit out Watkins Glen due to an accident in qualifying and was replaced by at the last minute by Dylan Murry.
***Grist told Sportscar365: “Arguably we should have two firsts or at least two top-twos by now. Sebring with the bouncing tire was a tough one. You couldn’t see it at all after leading every practice there. The Glen we were fast too but then in my stint the front dive plane was broken off, the front toe was all out. We didn’t have a lot to compete there in the end but we held on for as long as we could.”
***GTP class teams are again on Michelin’s Medium-High-Temperature compound this weekend, the same compound that was primarily used at Watkins Glen prior to a last-minute addition of an allocation of two sets of Soft-High-Temperature that was made post-qualifying at The Glen.
***As was the case in the only other two-hour and 40-minute race of the season so far, GTP cars are permitted to use up to three sets of tires between qualifying and the race.
***With BMW M Team RLL having been officially confirmed as winners of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, the GTP class has seen five different teams win the opening five races, including all four LMDh manufacturers, ahead of Sunday’s sixth round of the WeatherTech Championship season.
***Additionally, 11 of the 17 manufacturers represented in either the WeatherTech Championship or IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge have been victorious this year so far.
***IMSA President John Doonan said the 2024 WeatherTech Championship schedule will have no dramatic increases in total run times, despite the planned move to make the Indianapolis Motor Speedway round into a Michelin Endurance Cup round.
***Doonan told Sportscar365: “We’re finalizing the relationships and the sanction agreements with everybody right now. But we’re super sensitive about the costs for the teams. There’s no dramatic plans of increasing or no dramatic plans of decreasing. We just need to finalize it here in the next ten days.”
***An announcement on the race length for next year’s Indy round will be announced at IMSA’s State of the Sport address at Road America next month. Doonan indicated that a variety of different lengths have been considered, and clarified that an Endurance Cup round must be at least four hours in duration.
***Doonan revealed that there’s an entry waitlist for this year’s season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans, as was the case in the opening three Endurance Cup rounds of the season, including the much-publicized Rolex 24 at Daytona.
***Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta is able to accommodate a maximum of 54 entries. “We have several teams that want to come to Petit that for the moment won’t be able to fit, as of today,” said Doonan, who described the teams as a variety from European entrants to teams wanting to add a second car for the ten-hour season finale.
***The LMP2 class, which is provisionally set to again feature seven races next year, could have a capped entry, similar to how IMSA handled LMP3, which was set to 12 cars. “We’ve been visiting internally about it in trying to come up what that mix is,” Doonan said. “I think it’s going to come down to pit lane and paddock [space] and making sure we have the right mix of cars in each class.”
***While its TV deal with NBC Sports is confirmed through the end of the 2024 season, Doonan said that IMSA Radio is currently on a single-year contract, with a final decision still yet to have been announced for next year.
***The Chevrolet Grand Prix airs Sunday at 12 p.m. EDT with live coverage on network NBC. Brian Till and Calvin Fish will be joined by pit lane reporters Dillon Welch and Matt Yocum for the broadcast. IMSA Radio’s team again consists of John Hindhaugh, Jeremy Shaw and Shea Adam this weekend.
