Richard Westbrook and the No. 67 Ford GT team landed just .045 seconds away from their second pole in a row at Road Atlanta during qualifying for Saturday’s 10-hour Petit Le Mans.
Westbrook will start the No. 67 he shares with co-drivers Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon on the front row with Joey Hand, who qualified the No. 66 Ford GT p4, right behind in Row 2.
“Truth be told, we’ve been finding issues in set-up, but the crew on these cars did a great job getting this qualifying set-up right,” Westbrook said. “There was nothing left in me. I put everything on the table. We’ll have to see if we can stay there or move forward during the race. It’s a tough fight right now, with how competitive it is out there. We have a great car at night, we proved that in practice, and it’s a 10-hour race, so we hope to capitalize on that in the race tomorrow.”
Hand jumped to the top half of the qualifying field late in the session.
“I tend to always get my lap in towards the end of the qualifying run,” said Hand, who shares the No. 66 with teammates Dirk Müller and Sébastien Bourdais. “I thought I had a little more there but squeezing hundreds and thousands out of this thing was tough and that’s what we needed. I just couldn’t get more than what I got. I felt really good about the laps and the race car, because we struggled this weekend. We’ve tried a lot of stuff on this car and I think we did a good job dialing it in. Last night (during night practice) we really worked on the car for Dirk and today we did a little more work on the car during the day for me. I think we’ve found a good balance for the race.”
Ford Chip Ganassi Racing endurance drivers Dixon and Bourdais returned to the Ford GT lineups for Petit Le Mans, the final race in the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
“I think conditions were very similar to how we practiced during the daylight hours here,” said Team Managing Director Mike Hull. “Our guys just worked really hard to have the right balance. Both Joey and Richard did a terrific job in qualifying. If you look at the lap times, less than a tenth of a second separated the first five or six cars. We’ll have some fun tomorrow.”
