Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Matt Campbell will bring the 38-car IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship field to green Sunday after winning the pole Saturday (May 13) with a lap at 107.749 mph.
“Starting on pole is really really critical,” Campbell stated after the session. “It’s an extremely tough track to pass on and it’s got really high [tire] degradation, so track position is really key tomorrow.”
Campbell’s lap is the fastest lap of the weekend. However, it is three-quarters of a second off of the pole time from last year set by Ricky Taylor. Regardless, Campbell backed up his form from practice, where he topped both sessions.
Here, Campbell was on top for nearly the entire GTP session. Teammate Mathieu Jaminet briefly usurped him, but Campbell’s set the lap that held up for pole six seconds later.
That lap was nine-hundredths of a second faster than Jaminet, who gave Porsche Penske Motorsport a sweep of the front row. Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian’s Colin Braun will start third in his Acura ARX-06, then Action Express Racing’s Pipo Derani2 in the best of the Cadillacs. Taylor will start fifth.
The LMP2 class saw PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports’ Ben Keating and Crowdstrike Racing with APR’s George Kurtz trade the top spot back and forth. Keating had the lead, then lost the lap due to a track limits violation, then took it back.
Kurtz was then able to take the pole away on his final lap with a lap at 101.648 mph, ninth overall. The lap was .061 seconds faster than Keating. TDS Racing teammates Steven Thomas and Francois Heriau will start third and fourth, while Rick Ware Racing’s Eric Lux was fifth.
Pfaff Motorsports has struggled a bit with the new 992-generation Porsche 911 GT3 R in 2023. It’s a rather difficult car to figure out.
Despite the trickiness, Klaus Bachler was able to turn in a lap at 95.314 mph to win the GTD Pro pole. His lap was one-eighth of a second faster than The Heart of Racing’s Alex Riberas. WeatherTech Racing’s Daniel Juncadella will start third, followed by VasserSullivan’s Jack Hawksworth.
In GTD, Kelly-Moss Road & Race’s Alec Udell claimed the maiden pole position for himself and his team with a lap at 95.303 mph, just one-hundredth of a second slower than Bachler. Udell’s lap was .108 seconds faster than The Heart of Racing’s Roman DeAngelis.
AO Racing’s Sebastian Priaulx was third in his Porsche, then VasserSullivan’s Frankie…
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