HLs: 2026 IMSA Chevrolet Grand Prix Qualifying
Watch highlights of qualifying for the Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park as part of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship.
Video Transcript
We are at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, which is just outside of the town called Bowmanville in Ontario.
Just down the road, Oshawa, big GM plant down there.
The Chevrolet Grand Prix this weekend will be packed full of those supporting the bow tie.
That's good because we have plenty of General Motors product to cheer for those people who are here this weekend.
Two and a half miles, give or take, 3.9 kilometers.
Dudu Barrichello choosing to prioritize this series above other things.
He's missed out on a couple of WEC races, including his race at the Green Flag Fives, his home race, this weekend, right this weekend, at, in Brazil.
How difficult is it gonna be?
He's not going to have the same sort of time to prepare the Michelin tires.
He does.
He's been reasonably quick here.
In fact, has the fourth fastest GTD time coming into his qualifying session.
That's through three hours of practice to this point.
But this does put him on the back foot.
It also leaves him vulnerable.
If this session were to be interrupted in the second half by a red flag, all the competition might already have times on the board, but he would not.
So that's, certainly a challenge there.
And remember, in this championship battle, there are qualifying points paid in the WeatherTech Championship.
35 points for the pole, 32 for second, 30 for third.
After a few laps, don't expect to see somebody go and rip one off on the first final lap.
What sort of lap time should we be looking for, Brian?
Well, again, the best time so far this weekend was that lap from Lorenzo Petrarossi, a 1:15.5.
The qualifying track record for the GTD class is a 1:15 flat.
I'm not sure that the track conditions now are as favorable as they were in that earlier practice session.
But on the other hand, we've got stick tires, we've got low fuel tanks, and also fewer cars on the track than we had in that earlier session.
So some- somewhere below 15 seems to be a realistic target here for the GTD.
And of course, we've been talking about our camera operators.
We must not forget our brilliant audio team of, NASCAR Productions as well, because what would the pictures be without any sound?
And obviously on radio, that would be a bit of an issue.
Thank you very much indeed to all the team there, replays, techs, production.
Down to half distance.
Petrarossi then with a 15.777.
His second best lap is a 15.875.
Still good enough, Ryan, for pole position right now.
It would be, but we're about to start to see some laps really coming up in anger from the rest of the field that has been more circumspect about working their cars up into the, the window.
Now- Pederson, Ward, Patrick Gallagher now with a 15.7, so four drivers under the 16s.
And Dudu Barrichello, just for Richard Kelly, obviously stung by the negativity coming in on Akib's original ridges.
I'm only kidding.
And just on a minute to go.
Russell Ward goes through.
Doesn't improve.
15.399 is his best.
15.638.
A lot of Kevin De Vries.
30, 30 Celsius or higher here with an E in the part in Ontario at the end of June, start of July, with the current temps with a slight breeze are far more enjoyable.
You can only imagine what it's been like in the UK.
Mid-30, early to mid-30 Celsius aren't the norm.
Neither is air conditioning in private housing.
I've really rather enjoyed it.
It's even warmer in France over the last few weeks.
I was in the Le Mans Classic a couple of weekends ago.
40 Celsius we hit after the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Frankly, that event would not have happened, in that sort of heat.
Time has run out.
Ore Fudali sees in the checkered flag first for 13 Motorsport, running in the very patriotic colors of the maple leaf.
Very red and white Corvette.
Again, subject to post-qualifying scrutineering checks.
It will be Aston Martin Hartle Racing on the front row from the Chevy Corvette of DXDT Racing with low 15s, the Does that not speak then to his mental resilience and fortitude- Yes as well as his driving skill?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, what more can you say?
The fact that he's been able to just get down to business, learn these tracks, learn his co-drivers, adapt to whatever the situation throws his way.
He's been just about unflappable throughout the course of the season.
And it, it's almost reminiscent of Loren Heinrich, right?
When, when he came in as a rookie and won a championship, having all that success right out of the gate.
I'm not sure this has been quite to that level, but it's still really impressive what young Dudu Barrichello's been able to do.
Top of the pile in the burning GTD from his then Dudu Barrichello Hartle Racing team by getting off for a quarter, almost exactly a quarter of a second, 10.009 from- Corvette of DXDT to Lexus in third, then .017.
Third to fourth of a second because that time does ignore just how big a gap .243 of a second is.
It sounds like nothing, but from duty to second place and then from second place to- as well.
I've just seen a penalty, Brian, applied from that last session to Lorenzo Patrazi for failing to apply and adhere to the minimum power parameters, and he's lost, I think, four laps, on that as he's been credited with a 1:16.2, which pushed that car down to eighth position.
That's not the time we thought.
We thought he was fifteen, 15 triple seven, and that was certainly what he was credited with to start with.
So he's dropped a couple of positions there, I reckon.
So that's a, a second, effectively a second penalty for Conquest Racing.
Yes, that mean invalidate laps.
Now, is that four and seven or four two seven?
I'm not sure.
Four dash seven.
But ultimately, it's cost him some time.
Fred Vervisch is the quickest up to pace for the Ford Racing Ford Mustang.
Verhagen's first sector, Russell Ward second sector, and Alexander Sims third sector.
Nicky Catsburg goes into the fourteen's after fourteen eight.
Let's just remind ourselves that RLL lost forty-five minutes of a ninety-minute session chasing what they thought was a mechanical issue.
And in FP1, they lost all of that time.
It was a software issue, so presumably they just turned everything off and did a control alt delete, turned it back on again.
Sorry, I'm being awfully facetious there, ladies and gentlemen at RLL.
That is very, very impressive for Esterson.
Still, he's three-tenths away from pole, but it's on to fifty Celsius of track temperature for just a few minutes.
A little while ago, air temperature twenty-seven Celsius.
That's eighty-one in the air, one hundred and twenty-two when it's up to fifty on the track.
Punishing for the Michelin tires, and yet they continue to deliver performance at the very highest level.
Four minutes to go.
Hawksworth, another quickest lap for him, a fourteen eight.
So that's his quickest lap, and he trims the lead of Nicky Catsburg to a third of a tenth of a second.
.036 between first and second, and then a quarter of a second back to the rest of the field.
Outstanding from the leading pair.
Can he keep it going as he comes to the line?
He can.
Takes pole position by half a second.
It's not even close.
With the kind of gaps that we're seeing at the front of the field, he has just blown that out of the water on his ninth lap on the Michelin tires.
What was I just saying?
A hundred and twenty Fahrenheit on the track, fifty Celsius near enough.
And somehow the Michelins and Neil Verhagen and the BMW at Paul Miller Racing, a 14.382.
Mind-blowing moment for the iHeart Racing Neil Verhagen-driven Paul Miller Racing BMW.
That actually beats the track record by nine one-thousandths of a second as well.
What a lap.
Still a minute and a half to go.
Not calling it yet.
Tell you that now.
Alexander Sims goes back into second position.
Jack Hawksworth, by the way, has pitted.
He'll be no better than fourth with that 1:14.8.
He must have thought he'd beaten to it, but right now he mustn't.
He's on the outside of Paul Miller because both Corvettes have usurped him.
A 14.813 for Sims.
Nicky Catsburg, a 14.829.
But there's still half a second between Neil Verhagen and the rest of the field.
Nine tenths of a second across the whole of the GTD Pro field, and half of that-- Oh, no.
Max Esterson's found time.
Esterson on his ninth lap, a fourteen five.
He's within two tenths of a second of that outstanding Verhagen lap.
Esterson, the young American charger who is stamping his authority on this qualifying session behind Verhagen.
Verhagen has got a little more experience, I think it's fair to say.
Picked up by BMW as a junior driver and put through the ringer, and it's turned out a very good driver indeed in Esterson.
As the checkered flag flies, it's second place.
At the moment, it's McLaren on the outside of the front row.
Remarkable stuff.
Four of the top five now have put their best laps in on the very ninth or tenth lap.
What are Michelin making these tires from?
Incredible.
It's not very often, Ryan Marine, that I get lost for words.
But seeing that time and that qualifying by that young American driver in second place, look at the name- Right, we have the final set of cars, nine thereof.
They're all Orecas, and they are all setting off right now.
And fair play to AO Racing, who've brought their Merc tuning north of the border, which is not the work of a moment.
There's paperwork involved, in that.
No criticism, implied or meant to any border controls, by the way.
But, it, it was, I'm sure, something of a logistical challenge, shall we say, to get the Merc tuning north of the border.
And I have seen so much social media, from AO Racing fans of Rexy and Spike, Rexy, Roxy, and Spike, that, have been appreciative of that.
Right.
Same again, same question.
Who's fast?
Who's likely to be there, and what times are we looking for, Ryan, as the 15 minute starts to count down?
Well, remember, by rule, the bronze-graded drivers have to qualify in LMP2.
So looking at just the bronze drivers through two practice sessions, three stand out above the others.
Two should come as no surprise, Jeremy Clark and PJ Hyatt.
They've become kind of the qualifying masters of LMP2 over the last year and a half.
But sandwiched in between the two of them, and very snugly- Ooh, we're down to the 1:09s already.
Now, typically, these drivers, not pro drivers, switching on tires is a skill that even some pro drivers don't have, which is why they don't like to qualify.
An eye on Jeremy Clark as well.
He's gone through to second, actually, with a 1:09.
1:09.1 for PJ at the front of the field.
Switching a set of tires on quickly is a skill that some people never, ever get.
This is a lovely session, and the real, like, re- reason I like it so much is as the VP Racing fuel burns down, the performance potential of the Michelin tires is still there, and the fuel burns down quicker than the performance potential goes away on the tires.
So basically, it's very often last man across the line gets pole position, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because he can get a new set of Michelins and go again.
Is that what they're about to do here?
Clark into the pit lane as Mischa Goichberg displaces him from the front row.
.0- .09 of a second between first and second, then .029.
The top three are separated by a third of a tenth of a second, .038 across the top three.
Remarkable.
And they're not d- they're not done.
Hyatt just did a new overall best first sector, only by two one-hundredths of a second, but still- Got to come in for a new set of Michelins.
You're allowed to do that now.
In, in the old days, that was banned.
I actually like this, and quite a lot of the teams will use it just to scrub in or road a set of new Michelins for the race, particularly if temperatures are gonna be high.
These guys have done it halfway through.
This is reset now with five minutes to go.
Now, did they put a new set of tires on, or did they just adjust the tire pressures?
That we don't know.
We don't get the tire data here as we do in the WEC, although the RFIDs are in there.
Jeremy Clark in the Europol building back.
Almost exactly five minutes to go.
Brandon is doing it at Imsa Radio as GT3s were here, and their qualifying time was a 1:05.6.
I'm really in the green-and-yellow, in the Europol car.
They were a winner in class at Le Mans as well.
Is that four times in five years?
Clark goes to top, a 1:08.0.
So PJ, unless he can do something lower than a 1:08.0, 1:09 in steering the 108, he might have to do a 1:07 to be on pole position.
He's gone through.
Goichberg goes through into second.
Goichberg with a 1:08 flat as well.
Oh my goodness, this is so tight.
Half a tenth between first and second, a tenth between second and third, a tenth and a half between the top three, and we are tantalizingly close to a 1:07.
And there's time.
There is time, Ryan, for another lap for all of those drivers.
And Hyatt is on a flyer.
He is off a quarter of a second on his previous best.
That, if he could keep that up, would see him dip down into the 1:07s.
We're seeing George Kurtz doing Well, at least through sector one he was on a good lap.
Sector two kind of went away from him slightly.
So Hyatt, I think, is the one to watch here with 52 seconds on the clock.
Hyatt has That front left tire has dropped away in the middle sector.
Made a mistake, but he will get one more.
Comes to the line with just on 30 seconds or so to go.
This has got to be the one for PJ as they come through.
Toby Luetke, Chris Cumming, John Ferano all doing their best laps last time around in seventh, eighth, and ninth.
Coming across, Jeremy Clark, his personal best first sector.
Daniel Goldberg's personal best first sector.
What happened to PJ in that middle sector?
He dropped a lot of time.
A- again, I am lost for words.
Jeremy Clark, looks like he's had to work for it, and you know what?
I have no problem with that.
That was a pretty intense
