Tomorrow’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship “Acura Sports Car Challenge” will have an eponymous ring to it with two Team Penske Acura DPi’s on the front row when the green flag drops for the 160-minute sprint race at the Mid Ohio road course.
For much of Saturday’s 15-minute qualifying session, it appeared that Dane Cameron would be the one leading the way in the #6 Acura ARX-05. But that was not to be as the old pro, Helio Castroneves, stole pole position from his teammate on his final lap of qualifying with a stunning time of 1m 11.837s (113.155 mph) in the #7 Acura DPi he shares with reigning IMSA champion Ricky Taylor.
It was the second pole position on the trot for Team Penske after Cameron’s co-driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, led the field to green last month in the BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach. It was also Castroneves’ second career IMSA pole and his first since taking the front slot on the grid for last year’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
But poles are not a new thing at Mid-Ohio for Castroneves as he also took two IndyCar pole positions in 2007 and 2008 as well as collecting two race wins there in the CART Champ Car World Series in 2000 and 2001.
“Man, Dane was on it,” Castroneves said. “I knew he was going to be super-fast, and when they told me the number of the lap time that he did, and I passed him and then he did it again, and T.C. [Team Penske President Tim Cindric] – I’ve worked with T.C. in my radio with more than 10 or 15 years, and I knew exactly what he was asking for.
“I knew I had it. I just had to put it together. Every time I was going out there, the car was getting better, it was accepting it. It was a great team effort. Dane actually helped me to find out something that maybe wasn’t there, but we were able to put it together and it was awesome.”
Cameron will start second in the #6 car after a best lap of 1m 11.984s (112.924 mph) making it the first time that teammates will share the front row of an IMSA WeatherTech Championship race since then-Action Express Racing teammates Joao Barbosa and Cameron started 1-2 for the 2017 Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Another pair of teammates will also be sharing the second row of the grid too with Mazda Team Joest next up with Oliver Jarvis qualifying third in the #77 Mazda RT24-P DPi car with a lap of 1m 12.339s (112.370 mph) and Jonathan Bomarito slotting into fourth in the #55 Mazda DPi with time of 1m 12.596s (111.972 mph).
Completing the top five, and the first of the previously all conquering Cadillacs was Renger van der Zande in Wayne Taylor Racing’s #10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R he shares with the team owner’s son, Jordan Taylor. Van der Zande’s best lap of 1m 12.600s (111.966 mph) was just four thousandths of a second shy of the second Madza!