Dario Franchitti took a stunning overall pole position, his first in the American Le Mans Series, with a blazing final lap Friday to put Andretti Green Racing on the point for Saturday s Grand Prix of Long Beach. Franchitti piloted the Andretti Green Racing Acura ARX to a lap of 1:11.838 on the southern California waterfront.
It marked the first pole position for Franchitti and Acura in the American Le Mans Series. The Scot was 0.306 seconds ahead of Ryan Briscoe in the first of Penske Motorsports Porsche RS Spyders. LMP2 entries took the top three positions with Timo Bernhard third overall in the second Penske Porsche at 1:12.247.
“I d love to tell you that it was the strategy but I was struggling to get a clean lap through traffic and not making mistakes, ” Franchitti said. “We were really limited in practice. The last lap I came out of the hairpin to start the final lap and I had to back off because there was another car that couldn t get out of the turn quite right. “
It appeared for most of the session that the Penske Porsches would sweep the front row. Briscoe turned his lap on his next-to-last pass around the circuit and felt fairly confident he had secured the top spot.
