LONG BEACH, Calif. — Sebastien Bourdais was a satisfied man after shattering the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship track record for the Long Beach street course by nearly two seconds.
Bourdais uncorked a lap of the 1.968-mile, 11-corner circuit timed at 1 minute, 9.472 seconds (101.980 mph) in the No. 01 Cadillac DPi-V.R to lead Alex Lynn in a Chip Ganassi Racing 1-2.
The sizzling effort eclipsed the prior Daytona Prototype International benchmark of 1:11.332 established by Helio Castroneves in 2019 and earned Bourdais and Cadillac the Motul Pole Award for Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the third of 10 rounds in the WeatherTech Championship.
It was the 43-year-old Frenchman’s fourth career IMSA pole, and his second consecutive, coming on the heels of his field-leading effort at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts.
Now the challenge he and teammate Renger van der Zande face is to turn that one-lap pace into their first victory of the season in the 100-minute Long Beach sprint contest after a pair of troubled endurance races to open the 2022 campaign.
“Thanks to the Ganassi boys, because that No. 01 Cadillac was quite awesome to drive,” Bourdais said. “It’s been a long time since I got to do a qualifying lap where everything felt under control, and I just had to be clean and get the potential from the car. That was a great feeling.
Sebastien Bourdais was a satisfied man after shattering the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship track record for the Long Beach street course by nearly two seconds. (IMSA photo)
“We’re just looking for a different outcome,” he added. “So far this year, we’ve kind of shot ourselves in the foot quite a bit with mechanical issues – nothing to do with Cadillac, just problems on our end. So, we really need to clean up our game and put a whole event together. I hope it’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Bourdais and Lynn remained in the pits for the first five minutes of the 15-minute DPi qualifying session. Pipo Derani set the early pace in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac with a 1:10.001 lap that already undercut Castroneves’ three-year-old track record.
Derani was confident enough in his time to park the AXR Cadillac with five minutes remaining. But he was relegated to fourth, his time eclipsed not only by Lynn (1:09.833 in the No. 02 Ganassi Cadillac) but by Tom Blomqvist in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-05 (1:09.939).
All six competitors in the DPi class lapped under the existing track record.
Bourdais said that the Michelin tires used by all WeatherTech Championship competitors gripped up well in Friday’s intense heat, which featured track temperatures exceeding 140 degrees.
But the Saturday forecast is much cooler, with ambient temperatures expected in the low 70s, a twenty-five degree drop.
“The super unusual high temperatures helped get the tires into an optimal window for the car and the grip was really amazing,” he said. “The tires are also really stable, and the consistency is really good.
“But what happens tomorrow, I don’t think anybody really knows. We may be in for a bit of a surprise, but I think it will just be easier on the rear tires. It’s all about managing traffic and making sure you don’t get caught out in the big groups of GT cars that are going to be around until the pack spreads out a bit.”
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