Alex Job Racing drivers Bill Sweedler (Westport, Conn.) Townsend Bell (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) and Frankie Montecalvo (Highland, N.J.) will start the 20th running of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Motul Petit Le Mans from the seventh row at Road Atlanta tomorrow.
Bell had the wheel of the No. 23 Alex Job Racing Audi R8 LMS for the 15-minute qualifying session around the 2.5-mile, 12-turn circuit. The driver from California posted a lap of 1:21.648 on his fifth lap of the session. The team has been dialing in the Audi R8 LMS to a very warm track, temperatures at qualifying time were in the mid-80s. The team will take the start at 11:05 a.m. ET from the 13th position on the GTD grid.
“The balance is actually pretty good on the Audi R8 LMS,” Bell said. “We’re happy with the balance we’ve achieve. We’re just slow on the straightaways. We’re a good half a second to six-tenths off and that’s frustrating.
“It was a good call to come in during qualifying [for an air pressure adjustment]. That was planned. I had a better lap going and then there was a Lexus going slow to try to cool off. But, he showed no respect to the cars that were on [flying] laps. In IndyCar, that’s an easy penalty. But, I don’t know what they’ll do here. That’s frustrating because we worked really hard to at least make the best of what we had. It’s just frustrating.”
“We have been trying all week to repeat the set-up we worked to when we tested here in September,” Alex Job, team owner said. “The track conditions just weren’t the same. Frankie, Bill and Townsend have been working hard with the team to get the Audi R8 LMS up the time chart, but we have some more work to do. We will keep working tonight and look to the warm-up for even more improvement.”
The IMSA WeatherTech Championship Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta will be televised in three segments on FS1. The broadcast will start at 10:30 a.m. ET and go until 11:30 a.m. The race will switch to FS2 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. It will come back to FS1 for the finish from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
