LEXINGTON, Oh. — With a little more than a minute to go in qualifying, Motorsports In Action’s Michael de Quesada put down a lap at 94.234 mph. That lap held up to earn him the overall pole for the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 4 Hours of Mid-Ohio on Saturday (June 8).
De Quesada won the pole by .207 seconds over JTR Motorsports Engineering’s Jared Thomas in the team’s first race with a Porsche. TeamTGM’s Paul Holton was third, followed by JMF Motorsport’s Jesse Webb. Van der Steur Racing’s Danny Formal was fifth.
CarBahn Motorsports with Peregrine Racing’s Sean McAlister was quickest early on in his BMW, but was eventually usurped by de Quesada. Holton was the first Grand Sport driver to beat the TCR cars when he put his Aston Martin on provisional pole with nine minutes to go. He later improved to a lap at 93.852 mph. With just under six minutes to go, de Quesada set a lap at 93.996 mph.
The surprise of the session was Thomas, whose team was debuting a new Porsche Cayman. Fresh off a second-place finish in the Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup race earlier in the afternoon, Thomas put himself on top.
De Quesada wasted little time taking the top spot back. Shortly after Thomas took provisional pole, de Quesada snatched it back with the lap that held up until the end of the session.
In TCR, Montreal Motorsports Group put itself in the top 10 overall in Practice No. 2 on Saturday morning. The group was able to carry that pace over to qualifying.
Karl Wittmer set a lap at 92.588 mph early in the session to put himself on top. The other 15 teams took shots at that time through the final 11 minutes of the session, but couldn’t muster the pace necessary to dethrone Wittmer atop the charts.
Bryan Herta Autosport’s Robert Wickens was able to get up to second late in the session in his Hyundai. He set the fastest time of all in the first sector on another lap with a minute to go, but ended up aborting the run. That was all that Wittmer needed to hold on for the pole in eighth overall.
Wittmer took the class pole by .181 seconds over Wickens. Bryan Ortiz in the second Montreal Motorsport Group Honda was third,…
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