Flying Cars And Fast Times At Road America

Nico Pino flew the Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P320 out of Turn 1 at Road America during qualifying. [Pete Gorski Photo]

Elkhart Lake, WI – Speed was easy to find at the newly repaved Road America track during qualifying and the cars of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series flew around the 4.048 course, some literally.

When the session was completed, Pipo Derani who is no stranger to speed at Road America, topped the charts with a new track record of 1 minute 47.730 seconds.

The #31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac V Series.R driver beat the previous record by almost a second and out paced his closest competitor, Matt Campbell in the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsports Porsche 963, by just .068 seconds on the 14 turn course.

“It’s been obviously a very good weekend so far for Cadillac Racing,” said Derani. “We unloaded from the truck with a very good car, but with the field so tight as we have seen in every practice, we had to keep working hard for qualifying. To prove the results we had in practice with a pole position shows we were working in the right direction.”

The LMP2 field will be led to the green flag by George Kurtz and Ben Hanley (#04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR ORECA LMP2 07). Topping LMP3 group was Nico Pino (#33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P320).

Alex Riberas captured the Motul Pole Award in GTD PRO in the #23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3. In GTD, the 1 Paul Miller BMW driven by Madison Snow was the fastest in class.

The entire 45 car field will take to the track on Sunday starting at 11:10 am to 1:50 pm ET to race for the IMSA SportsCar Weekend win. The race will air live starting at 11:00 am on the USA Network and Peacock.

RacingNation Crew

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