Cadillac V-Performance racing team Konica Minolta Cadillac will start the IMSA WeatherTech Championship Continental Tire Road Race Showcase from the pole position for tomorrow’s race.
Ricky Taylor had the wheel of the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R for qualifying. He put in the sessions fast time of 1:53.058 on his third lap of the 4-mile, 14-turn track known as the National Park of Speed. Eric Curran had the wheel of the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R and posted a time of 1:54.222 that will have him starting sixth. Christian Fittipaldi will start in the next spot in seventh in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R based upon his time of 1:54.588. The pole for the Konica Minolta Cadillac team is their fourth on the season.
“What an amazing day – the car was beautiful today,” Taylor said. “I think the team just really executed and gave me a really good qualifying car. Obviously, this was just one lap and it took 15 minutes to do it and the car was just beautiful. But, I think tomorrow is going to be a completely different story where there are a lot of good cars and, once the finishing drivers get in there, I’m sure it’s going to be a really hard fight. But we’ll enjoy this for now. It’s good to have another good starting position. We need to get some points this weekend after two tough ones. I’m really happy for Konica Minolta. The Continental tires had us on rails. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. I think the weather for the race will be similar to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park with the changing conditions from wet to dry. We were spoiled in qualifying today with sunny skies and 75-degrees.”
Eric Curran and Dane Cameron are focused on consistency in the Whelen Engineering Cadillac.
“Overall not a bad run for our Whelen Cadillac,” Curran said. “It felt more like a practice session than qualifying. I was trying to figure out what the car wanted to go faster around Road America. Then, toward the end, we got it figured out and then didn’t have enough tire left. We have a very drivable car. I think it will race good. We will focus on the big picture tomorrow. We have always done well here at Road America. We were as quick at the end of the session as we were on our fastest lap so that gives us a good consistent Whelen Cadillac for the race tomorrow.”
Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa will go away from the third row for tomorrow’s 2:30 p.m. (ET) race start.
“It was a hard day for us in qualifying this afternoon,” Fittipaldi said. “We thought we had a good car yesterday. We will regroup and try to learn what happened. Tomorrow is what counts. We had a very shy qualifying effort. We will turn the page and make the Mustang Sampling Cadillac better for the race.”
The IMSA WeatherTech Championship Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America will run Aug. 3-6. The race will be televised on FS1 starting at 1:30 p.m. CT on Sunday.
