{"id":6316,"date":"2023-08-05T08:52:40","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T12:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=6316"},"modified":"2023-08-08T08:53:55","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T12:53:55","slug":"pole-position-for-sean-creech-motorsport-at-road-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/05\/pole-position-for-sean-creech-motorsport-at-road-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Pole position for Sean Creech Motorsport at Road America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Second straight LMP3 pole position and track record for the SCM No. 33 SCM Ligier at Road America<\/em><\/p>\n

ELKHART LAKE, Wis. (5 August 2023) \u2013On Saturday,\u00a0\u00a0Sean Creech Motorsport (SCM) took the first step toward capturing that elusive victory in the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at legendary Road America on Saturday afternoon, setting a new LMP3 track record and taking pole for Sunday\u2019s two hour and 40-minute race.<\/p>\n

Nico Pino earned his second IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship pole of the year for the team behind the wheel of the\u00a0No. 33 SCM\u00a0Focal One\u00a0Ligier JS P320, following a pole position in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The Chilean cleared the LMP3 class field by nearly a second, setting a new track record of 1:57.930 \u2013 and startling television viewers and team members alike by\u00a0carrying so much speed through turn one\u00a0that the Ligier looked to be taking flight at the corner exit.<\/p>\n

With Lance Willsey unable to attend the race weekend due to prior commitments, Pino \u2013 the team\u2019s endurance driver \u2013 joined Jo\u00e3o Barbosa at the legendary 4.048-mile road course. During Friday\u2019s practice sessions, the team focused on helping Barbosa come to grips (literally) with the completely new racing surface (following a late fall re-pave), while Pino learned the track\u2019s intricacies for the first time.<\/p>\n

But over the two 90-minute practices, incidents on track caused a combined nine red flags and made for very disjoined sessions. The loss of nearly one hour of valuable track time severely limited the drivers\u2019 ability to check the car\u2019s setup, as the team worked on downforce and balance over both the high-speed straights and low-speed corners. Both practice sessions saw the team set the seventh-quickest lap time \u2013 and the SCM engineering team knew that called for aggressive measures.<\/p>\n

The team made \u201csignificant\u201d aerodynamic changes to the No. 33 overnight, and Pino took to the track with no real idea of how the car would react. But the 18-year-old didn\u2019t hesitate, setting the quickest time on the first timed lap. Pino continued to re-set the quick time with each lap \u2013 despite going wide into turn one late in the session and getting all four wheels off the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the video \u2013 and the team said they replayed it numerous times on TV,\u201d said Pino. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like that much! But it certainly was good air time. This is my first time at Road America, and we struggled a bit yesterday in practice, so we had to make a big change for qualifying and explore the limits. I\u2019m happy with pole, it\u2019s a good position to start tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe changed the aero balance quite aggressively so the car would be better in the high speed, where we were struggling yesterday,\u201d Pino continued. \u201cNow we need to go a bit back on that \u2013 and of course, make sure the car will be in good shape for the end of the race. The track is still a bit slippery, but I think it will get better in time \u2013 but not in time for the race tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Team principal Sean Creech was happy with the outcome of qualifying \u2013 and ready to erase the memories from 2022, when the team was\u00a0caught up in another car\u2019s off-road excursion after an early-race rainstorm, ending the team\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

\u201cNico did a great job out there today \u2013 the entire team did,\u201d said Creech. \u201cWe did make a very aggressive change to the setup for qualifying and it really paid off. It\u2019s nice that we\u2019ll be holding the LMP3 track record here for what could be a long time (note: the LMP3 class will no longer compete in the premier IMSA series starting in 2024.) Now it\u2019s time to get ready for the race tomorrow \u2013 the track is still quite slippery offline so passing will be tricky. But we\u2019ll be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

SCM thanks partner Focal One for its continued support.<\/p>\n

The IMSA SportsCar Weekend main event takes the green flag Sunday at 11:10 a.m. Eastern. The race will be broadcast live in the U.S. on USA Network and Peacock. International viewers can watch via IMSA.tv, with IMSA Radio also available at IMSA.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Second straight LMP3 pole position and track record for the SCM No. 33 SCM Ligier at Road America ELKHART LAKE, Wis. (5 August 2023) \u2013On Saturday,\u00a0\u00a0Sean [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-feature","category-sean-creech-motorsports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6318,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions\/6318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}