Long Beach IMSA: Castroneves and Tandy win pole positions

Castroneves, a four-time IndyCar Long Beach polesitter, was over 0.2sec faster than his closest opposition, the Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R of Felipe Nasr, and over half a second quicker than his third-placed teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, who took pole for this event last year.

Joao Barbosa made a late improvement to slot the second AXR Cadillac into fourth place.

Jonathan Bomarito appeared to have a chance of taking pole but understeered his #55 Mazda RT24-P into the tires exiting Turn 6 after clipping the inside wall, although he remained over a quarter-second faster than teammate Tristan Nunez.

Jordan Taylor, who had his appendix removed earlier this week and for whom Kamui Kobayashi was on standby as sub, was a brave seventh fastest in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac ahead of the similar cars of JDC-Miller and Juncos Racing.

In GT Le Mans, Nick Tandy produced a 1min16.313sec in the #911 Porsche 911 RSR to win pole with a 1min16.313sec, just 0.064sec ahead of teammate Laurens Vanthoor who made a slight mistake on his final flying lap when he appeared to be heading for P1.

Corvette Racing’s Oliver Gavin was 0.2sec behind in third, beating IndyCar ace Sebastien Bourdais in the #66 Ford GT, the Frenchman subbing for the unwell Joey Hand.

Antonio Garcia slotted the second Corvette into fifth ahead of Ford fulltimer Ryan Briscoe in the #67 Ford, while the two BMW M8s of Tom Blomqvist and John Edwards brought up the rear.

Cla	Num	Driver		Class	Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	km/h
1	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor		DPi	Acura DPi	6	1'11.332			99.321
2	31	Pipo Derani Felipe Nasr		DPi	Cadillac DPi	10	1'11.550	0.218	0.218	99.018
3	6	Juan Pablo Montoya Dane Cameron		DPi	Acura DPi	6	1'11.847	0.515	0.297	98.609
4	5	Filipe Albuquerque Joao Barbosa		DPi	Cadillac DPi	12	1'11.870	0.538	0.023	98.577
5	55	Harry Tincknell Jonathan Bomarito		DPi	Mazda DPi	7	1'11.884	0.552	0.014	98.558
6	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez		DPi	Mazda DPi	12	1'12.147	0.815	0.263	98.199
7	10	Jordan Taylor Renger van der Zande		DPi	Cadillac DPi	11	1'12.312	0.980	0.165	97.975
8	84	Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson		DPi	Cadillac DPi	12	1'12.455	1.123	0.143	97.782
9	85	Mikhail Goikhberg Tristan Vautier		DPi	Cadillac DPi	10	1'12.650	1.318	0.195	97.519
10	50	Kyle Kaiser Will Owen		DPi	Cadillac DPi	8	1'12.694	1.362	0.044	97.460
11	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun		DPi	Nissan DPi	11	1'13.389	2.057	0.695	96.537
12	911	Nick Tandy Patrick Pilet		GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	10	1'16.313	4.981	2.924	92.838
13	912	Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor		GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	10	1'16.377	5.045	0.064	92.760
14	4	Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner		GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	9	1'16.520	5.188	0.143	92.587
15	66	Sébastien Bourdais Dirk Muller		GTLM	Ford GT	9	1'16.662	5.330	0.142	92.416
16	3	Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia		GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	12	1'16.685	5.353	0.023	92.388
17	67	Ryan Briscoe Richard Westbrook		GTLM	Ford GT	8	1'16.874	5.542	0.189	92.161
18	25	Connor de Phillippi Tom Blomqvist		GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	7	1'17.021	5.689	0.147	91.985
19	24	John Edwards Jesse Krohn		GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	8	1'17.236	5.904	0.215	91.729

#911 Porsche 911 RSR: Nick Tandy, Patrick Pilet, Long Beach, 2019

Photo by: Porsche