Castroneves beams over Mid- Ohio pole
LEXINGTON — Helio Castroneves has never tried to throttle back happiness, and so it was again Saturday when the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner put a Penske Racing Acura prototype on the pole for Sunday’s Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
An in-car video camera showed his fullface helmet failing to mask his grin.
“I’m pushing, obviously, making things happen,” Castroneves said. “Today was a perfect example … of not leaving anything in the bag. You’re just pushing.”
It took a big push on his final lap in the 15-minute prototypes qualifying session over the 13-turn Mid-Ohio course for him to best Dane Cameron’s top lap in the other Penske Acura.
Castroneves and Ricky Taylor will share the drive in the No. 7 car; Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya will share the No. 6.
“It was a great team effort,” said Castroneves, who started a busy month of May which will include him racing in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis IndyCar race next Saturday and the Indy 500 two weeks later. “I’m really excited about having the Acura Team Penske in the front row, and I’m glad to be the No. 1.”
He will lead three classes of cars — the prototypes, GTLM and GTD — to the start of the 2-hour, 40-minute timed race on Sunday. Among those behind him will be John Edwards, who drove the Hilliardbased No. 24 Rahal Letterman Lanigan BMW M8 to the pole in the GTLM class.
It was Edwards’ third straight pole at MidOhio in a GT car, but with a five-year gap — the last two times a sports car series competed at this track was in 2012 and ’13. He wasn’t sure why he has been fast here, but he did invoke the words of team owner Bobby Rahal.
“Bobby said before the weekend he thinks it’s a ‘driver’s track,’ ” Edwards said. “So I guess I can take that as a compliment, because I’ve had some success here. But it’s a really nice track. It flows really well. I like rhythm tracks, longer-duration corners, corners that flow into each other.”
The trick Sunday for the GTLM and GTD drivers will be running their race concurrent with the faster prototypes.
“I think it will be quite difficult for the prototypes to pass the GT cars, especially in that infield section,” said Jack Hawksworth, who put his Lexus RC GT3 on the pole in GTD. “And obviously from a GT perspective you won’t want them to pass you in that section because that’s when you’re going to lose most of your time.”
Pataskala-based Meyer Shank Racing has two Acura NSX cars in the GTD class — Katherine Legge qualified the No. 86 fourth in class and Justin Marks qualified the No. 93 in sixth. For team founder Mike Shank, it’s the start of a challenging month that will see his team also compete in the Indy 500 for the second straight year with driver Jack Harvey.
Canadian driver wins Challenge
Canadian Kyle Marcelli, with relatives from Dublin cheering him on, passed Ohio State alumnus Patrick Gallagher in the last five minutes and hung on to win the twohour Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge on Saturday. Marcelli and his KohR Motorsports team have won two of the first three races in the series this season with their Ford Mustang GT4.