McCumbee McAleer Racing’s Nate Cicero, making only his second career start in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, won the pole Saturday morning (July 12) for the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park 120 with a lap at 107.709 mph. It is the first career pole for the Mustang Challenge racer.
Cicero won the pole by .289 seconds over CarBahn Motorsports with Peregrine Racing’s Sean McAlister. Team TGM’s Paul Holton will start third in his Aston Martin, then Ibiza Farm Motorsports’ Moisey Uretsky. KohR Motorsports’ Bob Michaelian will start fifth.
Once the teams got up to speed, it was Cicero, making his season debut with the team, that was fastest early on. Holton gave chase.
Holton was able to improve shortly afterwards, but couldn’t quite match Cicero. McAlister also showed good pace in his BMW.
Later on in the session, Cicero was able to improve his time with what ultimately ended up being the overall pole. On that lap, he set the overall fastest second sector. Despite the faster lap times, this was the only one of the three sectors in which a Grand Sport car was fastest overall.
The rest of the GS pack tried their best to match Cicero, but none could do so. McAlister improved to second late, but the Mustang ended up with the pole.
In TCR qualifying, Montreal Motorsport Group asserted themselves once again. Louis-Phillippe Montour put his Honda Civic Type-R TCR on the provisional pole early in the session, the first TCR lap of the entire weekend in the 82-second bracket at the time.
During Practice No. 2 Friday afternoon, Montour was eight-tenths of a second ahead of the field. Not so much here.
Here, Montour had competition, first from Bryan Herta Autosport teammates Bryson Morris and Harry Gottsacker, then from Baker Racing’s Sam Baker.
Baker was able to get within four-hundredths of a second of Montour, but couldn’t get closer. On the final lap of the session, Morris turned in a lap at 106.761 mph to win the TCR pole.
Morris’ lap, which ultimately ended up sixth overall, was four-hundredths of a second faster than Montour. Baker will start third, then Gottsacker and Victor Gonzalez Racing Team’s Eric Powell.
IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Canadian Tire Motorsport Park Qualifying Results
There were no red flags during the session. However, Czabok Simpson Racing’s Harrison Goodman slid off-course and hit the tires at Moss Corner. That caused a delay in the action after the session, but did not cost him his best time.
The Canadian Tire Motorsport Park 120 is scheduled to go green at 1:25 p.m. ET Saturday afternoon. The race will stream live on both the IMSA Official YouTube channel and Peacock starting at 1:20 p.m. ET.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.