Extreme Speed Motorsports have locked out the front row of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship at Indianapolis in a show that the Balance of Performance may have been equalled.
It was Ryan Dalziel who scored pole, the first for ESM since Laguna Seca, setting a time of 1:17.603 to shut out Johannes van Overbeek by more than two tenths of a second.
To show that the Brickyard may be a good track for the LMP2 machines, Gustavo Yacaman put the OAK Morgan-Nissan third to set up a good race for himself and team mate Ho-Pin Tung.
“We’ve been close to the pole a few times,” Dalziel said. “We’ve had a couple of poles until the last man crossed the line and took it from us. This is great.
“Track conditions changed a lot, so we’ll have to be smart and predict what tomorrow night is going to be like. We’re going to be racing in conditions we didn’t test in. This is a great start. National Patrón Tequila Day — we got the pole, we’ve got the front row, so it was a perfect day.”
In GTLM it was Giancarlo Fisichella who claimed the first Ferrari 458 pole in the TUDOR Championship as he was the fastest of a train of seven cars all separated by 0.4 seconds. His time of 1:22.378 was seven hundredths of a second faster than that of John Edwards in the BMW Z4.
Indeed this was Fisichella’s first return to Indy since leaving F1, with a best of third in the Renault being the best of his eight starts.
“The Formula One car and the GT car are very different,” said Fisichella, who also earned his first pole in IMSA competition. “The configuration of the circuit is good for us. I did a perfect lap, I am confident with the car and I am comfortable in the car.”
In GTD it was Spencer Pumpelly in the Flying Lizard Audi that beat Mario Farnbacher to pole in the hotly contested category with James Davison in the TRG Aston Martin coming in third.
Finally Prototype Challenge, and Colin Braun outpaced the class to score yet another pole position in this TUDOR Championship season.
