INDIANAPOLIS — Second time’s the charm for Tom Blomqvist at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
A year after being stripped from the pole position for IMSA’s yearly visit to Indianapolis for failing post qualifying inspection, the British racer claimed pole position again in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06.
Blomqvist sped around the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course in 1 minute, 14.674 seconds (117.583 mph).
“We were fast here last year, you know,” Blomqvist said after qualifying for his first pole position since last October’s Petit Le Mans. “We had some new kind of concepts to try out in practice and they seemed to be working and we kind of executed that, you know, carried out through there to qualifying. Obviously, the weather was a bit of an unknown, could have thrown a curve ball there, but, thankfully we didn’t need to gamble too much, I guess.
“But yeah, I think we did a good strategy in qualifying. You know, [this] track is notoriously hard to warm up the right side ties. So just doing those two kind of laps there on the right tire, getting a little bit of temperature I think helped enable me to, I guess, probably get the peak out of the tire. Felt like I only really had one good shot at it there.”
Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R was just over three tenths of a second behind Blomqvist with Dries Vanthoor in the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 starting third.
In the LMP2 class, Jeremy Clarke won pole position with a fastest lap of 1 minute, 17.555 seconds (113.215 mph) in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07. Clarke was just 0.158 seconds faster than Dan Goldburg‘s fastest lap in the No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA LMP2 07.
“Leading up to qualifying, we weren’t sure what’s going to happen with the rain,” Clarke said. “I think that we got a little bit lucky with the lightning and kind of pushed off the start, and so we were able to kind of get a dry track. But even going out, you know, is a little bit, just hesitant. Not sure what the track conditions were going to be. So it took a little bit of confidence building to kind of put in that lap.”
PJ Hyett was third fastest in the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA LMP2 07, .215 seconds behind Clarke’s time.
The GTD Pro and GTD class qualifying sessions were canceled due to the lightning and intermittent rain that hit the track after the Michelin Pilot Challenge race ended. Both classes will line up according to their position in the standings.
IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks Qualifying Results
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.
A name and email address are required to post a comment. The email address is not publicly visible or shared. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated according to our comment policy.
Comments are listed in order from oldest to newest. Leave a comment