Cadillac’s Jack Aitken, who took pole for the Daytona 24 Hours for Cadillac, told media after the session that Cadillac or his team, Action Express Racing, hadn’t made qualifying a big focus.
“As always, quali here is a little bit going into the unknown because there’s not a big focus on qualifying through the practice session,” the Briton said.
“We’re very tight on our tyre allocation and time on track, frankly. So we don’t tend to want to spend it on quali sims. I know some guys did them this morning, so we took what we could from those runs to learn as much as we could about this new tyre, and then roll the dice.”
Aitken took pole with a 1:33.939, the only driver to lap below 94 seconds in the session. This is Cadillac’s first pole at the race since 2014, when Pipo Derani was fastest in qualifying, also for Action Express.
Aitken fought with Acura’s Renger van der Zande for pole, with the Cadillac driver eventually beating the Dutchman.
“I could see Renger in front of me actually, so it’s a good gauge,’ he said..
“When we finished the first flying laps, I could see him going away from me, and I thought ‘that’s not good’. Sort of got going after that and put a couple of good laps in even if they were scrappy.
“And I thought that’s as good as I can do, so I peeled off into the pits because these tyres do have a peak and then drop off.
“So I was just hoping that nobody had done anything really weird and gone out, super late or anything because I was thinking if you’re just pounding around, you’re not going to improve.”
However, Aitken was not the fastest in the first sector; that honour went to Porsche’s Felipe Nasr. This means, coupled with Aitken sector 2 and 3 session bests, the ideal lap in the session was a 1:33.796.
‘I mean it’s a lot of fun because you go into the unknown and you have to judge it lap by lap by a lot. The car was a bit loose which made her a bit scary at times, but clearly that’s fast. The Whelen Cadillac guys did a really good job to sort out a great car for me,’ Aitken concluded.
READ MORE: Daytona 24 Hours GTP qualifying results
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