Both #23 Heart of Racing and Notlad Racing Aston Martins secure class pole positions at Lime Rock
Saturday, July 17, 2021
A perfect way to start the racing weekend earlier as both the Heart of Racing and Notlad Racing Aston Martin Racing teams secured class pole position in their respective IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge Qualifying sessions at Lime Rock Park in the USA last night.
Having been steadily building up to this occasion over the previous rounds so far, Canadian Roman de Angelis securing both his and Heart of Racing’s first IMSA GTD Class pole position from the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus by just 0.045 of a second.
As a result of that, the #23 AMR Vantage GTD that de Angelis will share with AMR factory driver Ross Gunn on the second row of the grid as this round is only for GT cars and so for this event at Lime Rock, there are only three GTLM cars ahead of the GTD class!
Then in the supporting Michelin Pilot Challenge Qualifying session, the aptly numbered #23 Notlad Racing with RS1 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 of Pat Gallagher claimed his second pole position of their short MPC season so far ahead of their two-hour race on Saturday.
Possibly by more luck than judgement, Gallagher posted his fastest time immediately ahead of an incident on track with a Porsche that brought out the red flag before ultimately the remaining time of the Qualifying session was abandoned due to barrier damage. The gap to the second placed BMW was just 0.028 of a second!!
As reported last night, Gallagher and Stevan McAleer will drive this rebranded AMR car in the remaining rounds of the IMSA sanctioned support series (except Laguna Seca). Their last race in the series at Watkins Glen resulted in an overall race win of course!!
The full season AMR entry of Alan Brynjolfsson and Trent Hindman aboard their bright yellow #7 AMR GT4 will start the two hour race from an uncharacteristically low P9 position but the red flag will have had a bearing upon that.
Both races will be run today (Saturday).
Photo credits – IMSA / HoRT / Notlad
