LONG BEACH \u2014 Nick Yelloly marked a first for his team on Friday.<\/p>\n
Turning the fastest lap during Grand Touring Prototype qualifying in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Yelloly earned Meyer Shank Racing its first ever pole position in Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery happy to bring that to the boys and girls who\u2019ve been working their tails off to try and get this for a while,\u201d Yelloly said. \u201cNow we just have to keep it clean during the race because there\u2019s always some chaos during the races here on Long Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yelloly\u2019s fastest lap \u2013 1 minute, 11.626 seconds \u2013 came on his first lap of qualifying in his No. 93 Acura ARX-06, and was more than a half-second faster than any other driver during either of the two early practice sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided to really go out and get on top of it early,\u201d Yelloly said. \u201cI love street circuits and I was really able to push it. It was good fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canadian Orey Fidani got black-flagged for going the wrong way and will start 17th on the starting grid.<\/p>\n
In GT Daytona qualifying, Frankie Montecalvo\u2019s last lap was his best after posting a 1:18.411 in his No. 89 Lexus RCF GT3 to grab his sixth career pole and first at Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis place is a very difficult and technical track but we rolled off the truck extremely fast,\u201d Montecalvo said. \u201cLexus loves this place and it\u2019s one of my favorite street circuits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work really hard off the track to come out swinging,\u201d Montecalvo said. \u201cI think we\u2019ll rub some walls and use every inch of the track we\u2019ve got, and it\u2019ll pay off in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
RASMUSSEN HONORED<\/p>\n
IndyCar NTT Series driver Christian Rasmussen received his country\u2019s top motorsports award on Friday.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the post-qualifying press conference, Rasmussen was given the Danish Motorsport Driver of the Year award by the representatives of the Danish Automobile Sports Union.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think I get a trophy before the weekend even started,\u201d said Rasmussen, who previously won the award in 2017. \u201cAt the end of the day, you\u2019re just a little kid dreaming big.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rasmussen was the 2022 IndyCar NTT Series Rookie of the Year and is the first Danish driver to ever win an IndyCar race (Toronto in 2023).<\/p>\n
ST. JAMES SURPRISE<\/p>\n
IndyCar series icon Lyn St. James was among the 2027 induction class announced by the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America during a trackside ceremony on Friday.<\/p>\n
MSHFA president Daren Lucas, IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway president J. Douglas Boles and IMSA president John Doonan combined to surprise St. James, the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year award in 1992.<\/p>\n
St. James and the rest of the 2027 class will be formally inducted into the MSHFA in March during a ceremony at the museum located at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.<\/p>\n
Other new inductees include Gary Bettenhausen (open wheel), Ron Capps (drag racing), Rob Dyson (sports cars), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (stock cars), Herb Fishel (business), Steve Hinton (aviation), Harry Hartz (historic), Angelle Sampey (motorcycles) and Robert Yates (stock cars).<\/p>\n
TR\u00c9 COOL TO RIDE<\/p>\n
He drums fast but he\u2019s about to go faster.<\/p>\n
Tr\u00e9 Cool, the drummer for the five-time Grammy Award-winning and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted punk rock trio Green Day, will ride in the pace car ahead of the 51st annual Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Representing a special livery on the No. 60 Meyer Shank Dallara Honda driven by Felix Rosenqvist, Cool joins a long list of celebrities to ride in an IndyCar ahead of the green flag in Long Beach that includes seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady, actors Channing Tatum and Simu Liu and musicians\/singers Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH \u2014 Nick Yelloly marked a first for his team on Friday. Turning the fastest lap during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,28942,133,132,14396,127],"class_list":["post-273659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-grand-prix","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-motorsports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273659","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=273659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}