Hindman’s Porsche, McCumbee’s Mazda on Continental Tire Challenge Class Poles at Lime Rock
Trent Hindman claimed the fourth IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge TOTAL Pole Award of his career and will lead the field to the green flag for Saturday’s two-hour Lime Rock 120 at Lime Rock Park.
Driving the No. 12 Bodymotion Racing Porsche Cayman GT4, Hindman clocked a best lap of 55.388 seconds around the 1.474-mile circuit during the 15-minute Grand Sport (GS) class qualifying session to earn the pole, his first since the race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in 2014.
“We know we’re going against some really strong cars, some strong teams and drivers here,” Hindman said. “This is part of the little bit tricky strategy that engineer extraordinaire Mark Manning has come up for us. I can’t reveal too much but just want to say these guys gave me a great car to be able to go out and qualify that way, especially amongst our competition, the really strong teams and drivers. We’re going to do the best we can.”
Hindman will share the car with Cameron Cassels. The No. 12 duo currently leads the GS championship standings, by three points, 140-137, over No. 76 C360R McLaren GT4 co-drivers Paul Holton and Matt Plumb. Holton qualified fifth for the race, which takes the green flag at 10:25 a.m. ET Saturday and will be streamed live on IMSA.com.
“Obviously, the dream would be to stretch that lead and throw Cameron in and let him bring it home,” Hindman said. “It’s really, really good experience for him to be able to finish races now and get an idea about what that world is like and I think he’ll do a great job. There are just a lot of variables that are going to hit us tomorrow, as always, and we’re going to do obviously the best we can to mitigate that and come home with the best result. A win would be great but we just want to walk out of here with a points lead.”
Fresh off the car’s first victory two weeks ago at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Matt Bell put the No. 57 Stevenson Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R second on grid. Bell’s best time was 55.796 sec. in the car he will co-drive with Robin Liddell. Dylan Murcott qualified third in the No. 28 RS1 Porsche Cayman GT4 MR at 55.838 sec.
In Street Tuner (ST) class qualifying, Chad McCumbee earned the class TOTAL Pole Award for the third consecutive year at Lime Rock Park and will head into Saturday’s race looking for his third consecutive Lime Rock victory alongside co-driver Stevan McAleer in the No. 25 Freedom Autosport Mazda MX-5. McCumbee’s best lap was 59.052 sec.
McCumbee led a top-three sweep for Mazda in ST. The manufacturer picked up its 20th Continental Tire Challenge pole and first since last year’s Lime Rock race.
“Besides Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Lime Rock Park is absolutely the best racetrack we go to for our Mazda,” McCumbee said. “Mazda just gives us such a great platform to work with. The results speak for themselves. These two racetracks I mentioned, I think we’re three, four, however many years in a row and Mazda Raceway even more than that.
“Hopefully we can continue that streak. It would be awesome for Stevan McAleer and I to get three in a row here and three poles also. I didn’t know if we were going to get there today but the Freedom guys have worked their butts off on our ModSpace car and hopefully we can get ModSpace in Victory Lane again.”
Christopher Stone qualified the No. 34 Murillo Racing MX-5 second at 59.197 sec. and Matt Fassnacht was third in the No. 27 Freedom Autosport Mazda at 59.275 sec.
Source : imsa.com
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