WeatherTech Racing drivers Cooper MacNeil (Hinsdale, Ill.), Gunnar Jeannette (Salt Lake City, Utah) and Patrick Long (Manhattan Beach, Calif.) will start from the eighth row in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD class for Saturday’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
This weekend, the WeatherTech Racing team has had a bit of a tough time dialing in just the right set-up on the No. 50 WeatherTech Porsche. To that point, the team made several changes just before today’s 15-minute qualifying session, which included a set-up that none of the three drivers had used during any of the three previous practice sessions.
Heading into qualifying, MacNeil truly did not know exactly how the No. 50 Porsche would perform with this setup. In fact, MacNeil has only turned about 10 laps all weekend. However, following qualifying, he was pleasantly surprised at the car’s performance and he was appreciative for the team’s hard work getting the car up to speed. His fastest qualifying lap was 1:22.177 on his sixth lap around the 2.54-mile, 12-turn undulating road course.
“The guys have been working their butts off,” MacNeil said. “The car was way off coming off the truck. We worked on it really hard. We made some really drastic, large changes before qualifying, which you never like to do because you want to have a car that you’re confident in qualifying with. But, I was confident in the guy’s ability to make the big changes before qualifying. So, we’ve got a pretty good race car now. It’s pretty comfortable, a lot more compliant over the bumps. We’re going to run hard, stay out of trouble tomorrow, and be there at the end.”
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.
