{"id":273532,"date":"2026-04-18T01:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/273532\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T01:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:56:13","slug":"yelloly-acura-msr-hang-on-for-long-beach-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/273532\/","title":{"rendered":"Yelloly, Acura MSR Hang On For Long Beach Pole"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a day that began with the revelation of doubts surrounding the future of Acura\u2019s involvement in IMSA, Nick Yelloly put Acura Meyer Shank Racing\u2019s #93 Acura ARX-06 on the pole for tomorrow\u2019s IMSA Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.<\/p>\n

Driving the blue and orange 76-liveried Acura, Yelloly was the first driver to breach the one minute, 12 second barrier when he took the provisional top spot with a 1:11.756s. With less than three minutes to go, Yelloly found another tenth of a second, winning the pole with a 1:11.626s.<\/p>\n

Yelloly gave Acura Meyer Shank Racing its second pole of the year, and the first Long Beach GTP pole for Acura since 2023.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the damage that the #60 MSR Acura sustained in its Practice 2 crash forced the team to change to its backup chassis, leaving Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun at the back of the GTP grid for tomorrow\u2019s 100-minute sprint race.<\/p>\n

Yelloly\u2019s last lap proved to be decisive: At the checkered flag, Marco Wittmann set a 1:11.656s in the #25 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8, only 0.030s slower than the pole-winning time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Louis Del\u00e9traz also found some more speed near the end, putting the #40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R third on the grid with a 1:11.833s \u2013 but only 0.011s ahead of stablemate Jack Aitken in the #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R, who qualified fourth.<\/p>\n

Despite the recent Balance of Performance nerfs to the factory Porsche 963s, Julien Andlauer put the #7 Penske Porsche fifth on the grid, beating Dries Vanthoor, who had an eventful session with two ventures off course; Vanthoor was sixth in the #24 WRT BMW.<\/p>\n

Ross Gunn qualified seventh in the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie, followed by K\u00e9vin Estre in the #6 Penske Porsche, Filipe Albuquerque in the #10 WTR Cadillac, and Tijmen van der Helm in the #5 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Frankie Montecalvo overcame a five-minute hold at the start of GTD qualifying to put the #89 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 on the pole, the third straight GTD pole for Vasser Sullivan at Long Beach.<\/p>\n

Both Vasser Sullivan racing cars were held for five minutes for failing to perform a torque sensor offset test before Qualifying in a timely manner, along with the #46 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Temerario GT3.<\/p>\n

It cost Montecalvo some track time, but his qualifying pace was superb. On his final flying lap, he set a 1:18.411s to grab the top spot, and deny what could have been a very popular pole position for DXDT Racing and Robert Wickens.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wickens, on his last lap, set a 1:18.562s in the #36 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, good enough for provisional pole for only a few seconds until Montecalvo set his lap. But the second-place qualifying run still puts him on the front row in GTD, one year on from his first IMSA GTD start for DXDT in 2025.<\/p>\n

Danny Formal qualified third in the #45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini Hurac\u00e1n GT3 EVO2, followed by super-sub Spencer Pumpelly in the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in fourth, sharing the car with GTD championship leader Eduardo Barrichello.<\/p>\n

Russell Ward was fifth-quickest in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO, followed by Patrick Gallagher in the #96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO.<\/p>\n

Defending GTD class winner AO Racing will start tenth in class after IMSA newcomer Mikkel O. Pedersen\u2019s first qualifying effort aboard the #177 \u201cRoxy\u201d Porsche 911 GT3 R.<\/p>\n

Orey Fidani will start from the back of the field after spinning his 13 Autosport Corvette at turn 11, then driving the wrong way in order to turn his car around and return to pit lane \u2013 an action which saw the Canadian driver parked for the remainder of the 15-minute session.<\/p>\n

The IMSA Grand Prix of Long Beach starts tomorrow afternoon at 1:05 PM PT.<\/p>\n

QUALIFYING RESULTS >>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a day that began with the revelation of doubts surrounding the future of Acura\u2019s involvement in IMSA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132,110977],"class_list":["post-273532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-rj-oconnell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}