Nick Tandy brushed off some brushes with the wall during qualifying for the IMSA Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, putting the No. 6 963 of Porsche Penske Motorsport on the pole position.
In the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s debut on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout, Tandy turned a 1-minute, 5.390-second lap that edged No. 7 teammate Dane Cameron (1:05.514) for the top spot in the starting lineup for Satuday’s race (3:10 p.m. ET, USA and Peacock).
Tandy said he hit the wall twice during his fastest lap on the street course and had made contact in both practice sessions, too.
STARTING GRID: Click here for the Detroit GP starting lineup l Click here by car number
“We got these big cars, that’s the problem, and it’s a tight little narrow track,” Tandy told NBC Sports’ Dillon Welch. “But to find the limit, sometimes you’ve got to go over it, and I think every session, I’ve touched the wall.
“It’s not great for the vinyl department, having to revinyl the body work every time. But the car was good. I touched the wall twice in one lap, and the tire was really good. I messed that up, and past that it was a case of just trying to hook a lap together, and luckily we did. For a street track like this, it’s mega.”
Tandy later credited Team Penske’s IndyCar squad with helping provide valuable information from the race last season for optimizing the sports car setup.
“I can’t say too much,” Tandy told the IMSA Wire Service. “But anything they found, – especially with track evolution and differences in the track surface from this year to last – any information we gleaned from them for track modeling, we could implement into our simulation modeling. Naturally, you go through their notebook and see how the weekend develops. And after we ran our first practice session today, there was crossover that goes back to the IndyCar team.”
The pole continued an impressive run for Team Penske, which won the Indy 500 last Sunday with Josef Newgarden relying on fill-in team members from the sports car team who played key roles. A few weeks ago, Porsche Penske Motorsport earned the 100th sports car victory for team owner Roger Penske.
In GTD Pro (the only other category in the race), Antonio Garcia put the No. 3 Corvette Z06 GT3.R on the pole ahead of No. 4 teammate Tommy Milner.
IMSA DETROIT GP QUALIFYING ROUNDUP
Starting lineup
Starting lineup by car number
Results
Results by class
Fastest lap by driver
Fastest lap by driver after qualifying
Fastest lap by driver and class after qualifying
Best sector times
Fastest lap sequence
Time cards
PRACTICE RESULTS: Session I l Session II
