Tristan Nunez Earns Mazda Motorsports Another IMSA WeatherTech Pole at Mosport

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Tristan Nunez Earns Mazda Motorsports Another IMSA WeatherTech Pole at Mosport
Tristan Nunez’s #55 Mazda prototype is painted green, orange, and silver in honor of the marque’s 1991 win at Le Mans with the 787B rotary prototype. The #70 bears an identical pattern but in red, silver, and grey, expressing Mazda Motorsports’ current and future palette. (IMSA.com)
Chris Jasurek
7/9/2016
Updated:
7/9/2016

Tristan Nunez put the #55 Mazda Motorsports prototype on the pole for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Mobil 1 Sports Car Grand Prix at Mosport (officially renamed Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, but ... Mosport) Saturday afternoon, his second of the season.

Nunez turned in a time of 1:10.126 in his fourth eight qualifying laps, besting Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky Taylor, whose best was 1:10.435, 0.309 slower than Nunez in the Mazda.

Third went to Tom Long in the #70 Mazda with a lap of 1:10.572, 0.137 behind Taylor and 0.466 slower than his team mate Nunez.

Nunez was excited to win the pole, but his focus was on a much more important win.

“Qualifying is good and all, but we have one focus and that’s to win the race tomorrow. Everyone’s prepared for that. The drivers, crew, everyone was working their tails off at the shop—practicing pit stops. And the drivers have been working to be physically fit because this track is very challenging. Now we’re going to go out and see how it turns out tomorrow,” Nunez told IMSA.com.

“The competition is fierce. Everyone is really talented behind these cars. It’s amazing for the fans to see and it’s amazing we have this level of talent in the series. We'll try to make the most out of it tomorrow.”

Antonio Garcia put the #3 Corvette Racing C7.r on the GT-Le Mans pole, beating out Dirk Mueller in the #66 Ganassi Ford GT by only 0.038 seconds. The #67 Ford GT driven by Richard Westbrook qualified third.

Alex Riberas captured the GT-Daytona pole with a lap of 1:18.245 in the #540 Black Swan Porsche 911 GT3 R, edging out Andrew Davis in the #6 Stevenson Racing Audi R8 by 0.337

Colin Braun in the #54 Core Autosport Oreca qualified quickest in Prototype Challenge with a lap of 1:11.946, nearly a second quicker than second-place qualifier James French in the #38 Performance Tech car. 

 

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix from Mosport will take the green flag shortly after noon EDT on Sunday, July 10. The race will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1. Live Timing and Scoring are available at IMSA.com.