Braun’s track record nets CTMP pole

Images by LAT


147 shares
share
tweet
email
By: J.J. O'Malley | 3 hours ago


Flexing the muscle of the Nissan DPi, Colin Braun broke his own track record at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park to capture the pole for Sunday’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix.

Braun ran a quick lap of 1m05.452s in the No. 54 CORE autosport Nissan Ligier JS P217, edging out the No. 7 Team Penske Acura ARX-05 of Helio Castroneves by 0.074 seconds. The Team Penske driver made a late attempt to take the pole, but spun and continued in Turn 5.

“We made a last-minute decision to have me qualify,” said Braun, whose co-driver Jon Bennett usually qualifies and starts the race. “We had good speed in practice, so we thought we’d give it a whirl. I’m happy we could qualify it as well with our race car.

“I did an OK lap, then I did a greedy lap, and it stuck pretty good, so I thought I should have done an even greedier lap. But I was proud of that lap. It was certainly on the edge in a few places and over some exit curbs that I didn’t like to be over, but you gotta do what you gotta do.”