Front row start in class for the #68 Car Blanche AMR at IMSA Petit Le Mans tomorrow

Qualifying ahead of tomorrow’s final round of the IMSA Wethertech Sportscar Championship from Michelin raceway Road Atlanta is also in the bag for the four Aston Martin powered crews entered as the season rounds off at its traditional Petit Le Mans venue.

For the 2026 season, we still have the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD of Eduardo Barrichello needing to overcome and surpass the 126 points deficit within his GTD class if he is to lift that class title at the end of tomorrows ten-hour marathon as both Tom Gamble and Zacharie Robichon assist the young Brazilian to that end.

 

With this event also being the round of the parallel Endurance Cup season, that opened up the qualifying role from the lowest graded driver to one of choice where Robichon this time went about looking for both grid position and the final qualifying points of the season. However, he had to make do with a P6 finish after the session was red flagged due to two other cars coming together, leaving one in the gravel going into the downhill turn 10.

That also meant that the #44 Magnus Racing AMR Vantage GTD of John Potter, Spencer Pumpelly and Mario Farnbacher would be starting from the rear of the pack P18 in class after bronze ranked driver Potter elected to qualify his car.

 

Next up was the GTD Pro class with AMR being represented again by the #68 Car Blanche Vantage GTD Valentin Hasse-Clot, Marco Sorensen and with Mattia Drudi completing the qualifying honours for the squad who have already been confirmed as full season entrants for next year.

Some awesome sequence of laps from the Italian will see the #68 car start tomorrows race from P2 on the grid – their best position to date this season within either their GTD or GTD class entries.

 

Finally, it was the turn of the GTP class runners with Ross Gunn again on Qualifying duty with the #23 Aston Martin Valkyrie that he will share with both season regular Roman De Angelis alongside third man in Alex Riberas.

Running the same preparatory programme in the session as most others, Gunn would soon post some progressive laps times that would see him comfortably placed within the midst of the eleven strong class but as his tyres faded, the #23 would still come away with another respectable P8 start to tomorrows race where their starting position will have absolutely no relevance to where they eventually finish in the dark of night tomorrow.

Photo credits – Teams / social media