ELKHART LAKE, Wis.,
Aug. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- For
the second year in a row, Acura Team Penske swept qualifying for
Sunday's IMSA WeatherTech Championship race at Road America, with
Ricky Taylor claiming the pole, and
teammate Dane Cameron qualifying
second. In GTD, Meyer Shank Racing's Matt
McMurry posted the seventh-quickest GTD qualifying run in
his Acura NSX GT3 Evo.
Acura Team Penske
Taylor hustled his #7 Acura ARX-05
to a time of 1:49.061 around the 4.0-mile Road America circuit,
with teammate and defending series champion Cameron slotting in
second, three-tenths of a second behind. This is Taylor's
20th career pole in IMSA competition, and his second for
Acura Team Penske, with the first recorded last year at WeatherTech
Raceway Laguna Seca.
The front-row sweep repeated Acura Team Penske's qualifying
performance from last year, when Cameron claimed the pole driving
the #6 ARX-05, and Helio Castroneves completed the front row in the
#7 Acura. Cameron and Juan Pablo
Montoya went on to finish second in last year's race en
route to the IMSA Manufacturer, Driver and Team championships.
Taylor will start the #7 for Sunday's two-hour, 40-minute
contest, once again co-driving with Castroneves, while Montoya will
continue to share the driving duties aboard the #6 with
Cameron.
Acura NSX GT3 Evo Teams
Matt
McMurry led the way for Meyer Shank Racing team in the
ultra-competitive GT Daytona category qualifying session, and will
start his #86 Acura NSX GT3 seventh in class, sharing the driving
duties with defending series champion Mario
Farnbacher.
In the #57 Heinricher Racing with MSR Acura, Misha Goikhberg qualified just over a tenth of a
second slower in eighth, and will share with co-driver Alvaro Parente. Till Bechtolscheimer
rounded out the Acura GTD contingent in qualifying, and will start
his Gradient Racing NSX GT3 Evo from 10th before handing
off to co-driver Marc Miller in
tomorrow's race.
Live US network television coverage from Road America begins at
1 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 2, on
NBC. Complete, flag-to-flag race coverage also will be
available on the NBC Sports App and NBC Gold with NBCSN Trackpass
authentication.
Acura Motorsports social media content and video links from Road
America will be available on Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/HondaRacingHPD) and Twitter
(https://twitter.com/HondaRacing_HPD). Produced by the CoForce
Digital Media, the YouTube videos can be found
at: https://www.youtube.com/HondaRacingHPDTV.
Quotes
Ricky
Taylor (#7 Acura Team Penske ARX-05) pole qualifier,
first pole of 2020, 20th career IMSA pole: "It's
been a great weekend for Acura Team Penske and it's nice to cement
the strength of our ARX-05 prototypes in winning the pole position,
and doing it in a 1-2 fashion. Both cars have been really fast this
weekend. We kept swapping the top spot on the charts. Road America
is a track that fits these cars so well, so we were hoping to come
out of the box strong to get our season back on track a bit. We've
done that to this point, but we need to continue to execute in the
race the way we have so far this weekend."
Matt McMurry (#86 Meyer
Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo) qualified seventh in
GTD: "Qualifying went pretty well today, but we had pace
to be further ahead than we ended up, Unfortunately I ran into
traffic on what would have been my fast lap. We're trying to
strategize for tomorrow. There's a strong chance of rain [tomorrow]
and Mario [Farnbacher, co-driver] and I are both excited for
that!"
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SOURCE Acura Motorsports