In his final race at Road America as a driver, Gil de Ferran claimed his first pole position at the track as de Ferran Motorsports continued its dominating run in the American Le Mans Series. The team owner and Brazilian legend turned in a lap of 1:48.216 (134.664 mph) in qualifying for the Time Warner Cable Road Race Showcase. The de Ferran Motorsports XM Acura ARX-02a will start from the overall pole for the fourth straight event.
The team owner and teammate Simon Pagenaud will go for their record fifth straight overall victory in the American Le Mans Series on Sunday. De Ferran out-qualified Patrón Highcroft Racing’s David Brabham by 0.823 seconds.
De Ferran, who announced last week that he will retire as a driver at the end of the season, has been fastest in each session this week.
“We really had a great run here since we unloaded the car,” de Ferran said. “It has been pretty good. The credit for the pole position has to go to the engineers, though. They have done a lot of work - analyzing the track, looking at the mistakes we made last year. They have come up with a setup that has been pretty good. We have been playing with it, making small adjustments.”
After failing to record points in the season-opening race at Sebring and not finishing at St. Petersburg, de Ferran and Pagenaud have been on a tear. Their first victory came at Long Beach in April and they haven’t lost since. They also have pulled to within nine points of Brabham and Scott Sharp for the P1 championship lead.
“For me, this is one of my favorite race tracks that I have been to in my whole career,” said de Ferran, who was third in 1997’s CART race at the circuit. “To be here on pole for the last time I will be driving at Road America is great. They don’t make race tacks like this anymore. It is a very long laps. All sorts of different corners. It goes uphill and goes downhill. There are bumpy corners and smooth corners. For a driver it is a great challenge.”
Autocon Motorsports’ Chris McMurry qualified third in class and seventh overall. He turned in a best time of 1:53.649 (128.226 mph) in the Lola B06/10-AER that he will drive with Bryan Willman.
In LMP2, Marino Franchitti gave Dyson Racing its first LMP2 pole position and the first in the American Le Mans Series. The Scottish star broke Lowe’s Fernandez Racing’s six-race streak of pole starts with a lap of 1:51.010 (131.275 mph) in the Mazda-powered Lola B09/86 coupe that he will drive with Butch Leitzinger. The two already have a victory to their credit this season, two rounds ago at Lime Rock Park.
He bested Adrian Fernandez and the Mexican star’s Acura ARX-01b by 0.212 seconds. Fernandez and Luis Diaz, however, still have a lead on Franchitti and Leitzinger in the class championship by 51 points; 20 go to the class winners of Sunday’s race.
Franchitti’s best lap was his first flying lap, and the time stood for the full 20 minutes.
“I think I used the front tires - overdrove on a few corners - on the first run,” said Franchitti, whose only other pole position came at Sebring in 2004 driving a Nissan-powered Lola P2. “In the second run, I almost did the same thing. There have a been a lot of close laps. It is a great competition out there.”
The top four cars in LMP2 on Saturday were within 0.912 seconds. Dyson teammate Guy Smith, who suffered a broken suspension on his Mazda-powered Lola, qualified third at 1:51.832 (130.310 mph) in the car that he will drive with Chris Dyson.
The first year of the Dyson-Mazda partnership has been improving steadily throughout the season. It’s a good thing considering the strength of the Lowe’s Fernandez Acura and the recent addition of Team Cytosport’s Porsche RS Spyder, which Klaus Graf qualified sixth overall Saturday.
“After Sebring, it was a turning point, as we were in the infancy of our program,” Franchitti said. “We got a fast lap in St. Pete and finally the win at Lime Rock, but really we are taking it step-by-step.”
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