BRASELTON, Ga. — Action Express Racing’s Jack Aitken won the overall pole Friday afternoon (Oct. 11) for this weekend’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Motul Petit Le Mans. It is his first career WeatherTech pole. Aitken’s lap at 131.306 mph is a GTP lap record for Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
“It’s a real pleasure to have the track to yourself after all the traffic that we had in practice,” Aitken said during a post-qualifying press conference. “We just made a few changes [to the car] overnight, nothing major.
“It was a lot of fun,” Aitken continued. “Happy that we kept it on the black stuff. Happy that I got my first pole.”
Aitken won the pole by seven-hundredths of a second over Penske Porsche Motorsport’s Dane Cameron. BMW M Team RLL’s Connor de Phillippi will start third, followed by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Global’s Filipe Albuquerque.
Like many GTP qualifying sessions, the field took a while to get themselves up to speed. The first driver to set a representative lap time in the session was JDC-Miller MotorSports’ Phil Hanson. His first lap was in the 72-second bracket, then he improved to a lap at 70.444 seconds, 129.805 mph.
Hanson held on at the top for a few minutes before Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Nick Tandy usurped him. It wasn’t long after that that the Cadillacs came out to play.
Cadillacs had topped all three practices on Thursday and Friday didn’t appear to be all that different. Bourdais was able to put himself on top, then Aitken topped him.
A couple of laps later, Aitken bettered his quick time. At that point, he pitted because he was out of fuel. Everyone else took their shots at him, but could not beat the Whelen Cadillac.
The contact resulted in part of Thompson’s nose ending up on the track, which drew a red flag. Both drivers lost their two fastest laps, but continued in the session.
LMP2 saw United Autosports’ Ben Keating lay down the gauntlet early on. His lap at 125.271 mph was the second fastest lap of the whole weekend in LMP2 to that point.
TDS Racing’s Steven Thomas attempted to keep pace and did so to a certain degree. So did Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports’ Nick Boulle.
However, when challenged, Keating buckled down and set the fastest LMP2 lap of the weekend at 125.710 mph with three minutes to go. That was good enough to win the class pole in 12th…
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