----There's no denying that BMW is on a roll in the American Le Mans Series. After scoring a dominant 1-2 finish in last month's Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, BMW Team RLL backed it up with the GT class pole for Saturday's Tequila Patron American Le Mans Series at Long Beach.
The 15-minute GT qualifying session featured a heated three-way battle between the No. 45 Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche of Patrick Long, the Jan Magnussen-driven No. 4 Corvette Racing C6.R and Joey Hand aboard the No. 56 BMW M3 GT. While Long laid down a flying lap early, it was Hand who ultimately ended up on top, thanks to his 1:19.090 lap time set with less than six minutes remaining.
“I’ve wanted to win here for a long time, so this is a good start towards that,” said Hand, who set a new class qualifying record. “On a street course like this, when you come out of the trailer and have two hours of practice, you qualify and you race, the first guy that’s fast is the guy to beat. That’s what my goal has been.” Hand and co-driver Dirk Muller will be searching for their second win of the season.
The No. 4 Corvette of Magnussen and co-driver Oliver Gavin will start second in class thanks to the Dane's 1:19.137 lap time. Bill Auberlen made a late charge to third in BMW Team RLL's sister entry, with the No. 45 Porsche of Long settling for fourth, despite improving his time in the closing minutes.
After suffering a crash at the wheel of his Team Falken Tire Porsche this morning, Wolf Henzler redeemed himself in qualifying, clocking the fifth quickest time in class. Henzler's 1:20.065 lap time was 0.975 seconds slower than the pole-sitting BMW of Hand.
While the GT cars took center stage with over a dozen contenders vying for top honors, the fight for the LMP1 pole was a two-horse race between Dyson Racing's Guy Smith and Muscle Milk AMR's Klaus Graf.
Despite there being the only two cars on track, qualifying proved to be a mega duel, with the provisional pole exchanging hands nine times over the course of the 15-minute session. It ultimately went in favor of Smith, who reeled off a 1:14.001 lap time, improving on his pace-setting practice lap by nearly three seconds. The time was 0.452 seconds quicker than Graf’s 1:14.453 in his Lola-Aston Martin.
“We don’t have so many cars here, but anytime you can beat the Muscle Milk guys [is great],” said Smith, who will share the wheel of the Lola-Mazda with Chris Dyson. “Qualifying was close. Every time I crossed the line, I may have been half a second up and Klaus would go quicker and push me harder. Klaus kept me honest all the way through.” The pole for Dyson's Lola B09/86 Mazda was extra special, as Mazda's North American headquarters is in nearby Irvine, Calif.
CORE autosport celebrated its first LMPC pole, thanks to Gunnar Jeannette's quick lap of 1:17.736 in his No. 06 Oreca FLM09. Jeannette enjoyed a spirited battle with the No. 89 Intersport Racing entry of Kyle Marcelli and the Alex Figge-driven No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports machine, which ended up second and third in class, respectively.
“It’s going to be a crazy race, that’s for sure,” said Jeannette, who will share the wheel with Ricardo Gonzalez. “Our class is extremely competitive. I’m just going to do my best to keep everything clean tomorrow and let the strategy sort itself out and see where we end up.”
In GTC, Jeroen Bleekemolen scored the top spot in his Black Swan Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car. The speedy Dutch driver turned a 1:23.179 lap time, edging out the No. 23 Alex Job Racing entry of Leh Keen by 0.674 seconds.
Bleekemolen and co-driver Tim Pappas began their GTC campaign here one year ago in what culminated with a championship by years’ end.
“Since then, we’ve improved so much,” Bleekemolen said. “In the end, even with missing Sebring, we still took the championship. This year started really well with winning Sebring. If it continues like this, it would be even better than last year.”
Both of the Level 5 Motorsports Lola-Hondas, the only LMP2 cars in class, elected not to qualify. The defending LMPC champions will only run one car in tomorrow’s two-hour race, but have yet to decide on which one it will be.
Level 5 team owner/driver Scott Tucker is nominated in the team’s Lola-Honda Coupe, although the David Stone-led team wants to run its cost-capped Lola B11/40 Honda, but only if Tucker can score points. The team will await a final decision from IMSA tomorrow morning.
“The reason we didn’t qualify was really based on the performance of the car,” Stone explained. “We didn’t want to put them in the mix right up at the front at the start with a bunch of other cars that are faster... and risk it.”
Stone hopes that IMSA will allow Tucker to move over to the team’s open-top Lola in order to preserve the coupe, which is scheduled be on a plane to France on Sunday to compete in next weekend’s Le Mans Test Day.
“If we have to run the coupe, then we’ll run it 20 laps [the minimum to score points] and then pull it,” Stone said. “If we don’t, we’ll run the other one for the full race because we don’t have the same concern as it’s not going to Le Mans.”
