ALMS: Bernhard puts Penke Porsche on Mid-Ohio pole

Nice work from Porsche and the LMP2’s. Again, Audi has their work cut out for them.

Acura Sports Car Challenge, scheduled for 3:15 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 21 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The race will be broadcast XM Satellite Radio’s Sports Nation Channel at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday. American Le Mans Radio will air live coverage via americanlemans.com, which also will feature IMSA’s Live Timing & Scoring. CBS Sports will broadcast the race from 2 to 4 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 22.

Penske Motorsports’ Timo Bernhard had a feeling that Friday would be a record-breaking day at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. He just didn’t know by how much. Bernhard earned a bit of redemption with an overall pole position for Saturday’s Acura Sports Car Challenge with a landmark lap in his Porsche RS Spyder.

Bernhard set an American Le Mans Series record with a time of 1:08.510 around the 2.25-mile, 13-turn road course as new qualifying marks were set in all four classes. The Porsche factory pilot bested Hayanari Shimoda’s mark from 2005 by nearly three full seconds, set in a Zytek LMP1. Friday marked the sixth consecutive event at which a LMP2 entry captured the overall pole position.

Bernhard and Romain Dumas took the first overall victory for Penske in the American Le Mans Series last year at Mid-Ohio despite starting from the back of the grid. Bernhard qualified on pole position but his car was found to be overweight in post-qualifying inspections. There were no such problems this year.

“Last year I was sitting in the tower with the first pole for LMP2 and for the Spyder,” Bernhard said. “Last year I started from the back and caught the top four guys very quickly. This year we have a lot of poles but have never won from the pole so we have to change that here.”

The sister Penske Porsche of Sascha Maassen and Ryan Briscoe will start from the outside front row after Maassen’s best effort of 1:08.755. The duo has taken the overall win in the last two Series events and will start just ahead of the best of the Acura entries, the Lowe’s Fernandez Racing Lola-Acura of Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz. Fernandez was 0.463 seconds behind Bernhard.

“The competition is very, very high,” Bernhard said. “We could never be sure that the Acuras wouldn’t surprise us. When you look at the gaps, they are getting closer and closer. During the race you will see a good show because the competition is so high. With eight or nine cars in LMP2, it will be really hard to overtake. So you’ll have to mind your strategy to stay in front.”

Dindo Capello qualified the No. 1 Audi R10 TDI fourth overall and first in LMP1 on Friday at Mid-Ohio.
First in LMP1 and fourth overall was Audi’s Dindo Capello at 1:09.435 in one of two factory diesel-powered R10 TDIs. The two-time Le Mans-winning prototypes are making their debut at Mid-Ohio. Capello, who won in class last year with Allan McNish in the Audi R8.

“We were struggling quite a lot until the last five minutes of the second practice,” Capello said. “We decided since we were trying something new, we went back to a more standard setup and we got back the feeling. We could set a decent lap time but it was hard to keep an average performance. We went back to the standard setup and improved.”

Capello was 0.443 seconds ahead of the sister Audi of Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner. The reigning Le Mans winners were eighth overall as Audi tries to win its first overall race since St. Petersburg. The lighter prototypes have an advantage over the bigger diesel-powered cars on shorter, tighter courses like Mid-Ohio.

“We knew the P2s would be better for sure,” Capello said. “The engineers at home sent us a comparison and as in Salt Lake City they were 100 percent right. The gap should have been a little bit less than 1 second and that’s what happened on the race track. I think as always our car can close the gap in the race. We could not get the peak of the performance from the tires in qualifying but we can run so consistent during the race. That is the good thing that will help us.”