Alton, Va., (Aug. 26, 2017) – WeatherTech Racing drivers Cooper MacNeil (Hinsdale, Ill.) and Gunnar Jeannette (Salt Lake City, Utah) will start the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Michelin GT Challenge race at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) from row seven in GTD tomorrow.
MacNeil had the controls of the No. 50 WeatherTech Porsche 911 GT3 R for the 15-minute qualifying session around the 3.27-mile, 17-turn natural terrain road course. The team has been getting reacquainted with the Porsche since bringing it back into service at the last race at Road America. MacNeil was able to vastly improve on his practice time and post a lap of 1:45.530 good for a seventh row starting position for tomorrow’s 1:30 p.m. green flag.
“We’ve had a few issues this weekend in practice,” MacNeil said. “We have been chasing the set-up of the car. We just don’t have the miles on the car yet to put that perfect set-up under it right now. In qualifying I was driving it hard, almost went off twice, but was able to get in a fast lap at the end. I gave it everything I had. There is another Porsche a couple spots ahead of us. We are closer to them than we were in practice, so I feel good about that aspect. We will leave nothing on the table for the race tomorrow.”
“Cooper did a great job in qualifying,” Jeannette said. “At the end of his first two timed laps he radioed that he had gotten everything out of the car and then he said he was going again. We are glad he did, he shaved another seven-tenths off his previous run. Great work to get solid in the 45s. We have some more tuning for the warm-up tomorrow to try some things, then we should be good to go.”
The IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 (FS1) starting at 1:30 p.m. ET tomorrow, Sunday, Aug. 27.