News

Track:                    Road Atlanta
Race:                     Petit Le Mans
Date:                     October 6, 2017

No. 6 ORECA-07 LMP2 – Juan Pablo Montoya, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud

Overall Position:              1st
Class Position:                  1st
Time:                                  1:11:314 seconds  (Helio Castroneves)
Speed:                                128.221 mph

Fast Qualifying Time:      1:11:314 seconds  (Helio Castroneves – Team Penske)

Recap: Team Penske made a triumphant return to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Friday afternoon at Road Atlanta, as the team captured the pole position for the 20th running of the Petit Le Mans. The team started the weekend with three strong practice sessions on Thursday with drivers Juan Pablo Montoya, Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves behind the wheel of a new ORECA-07, Gibson-powered machine. Castroneves was selected to pilot the car for qualifying and turned the fastest lap of the weekend on his next to last circuit, clocking in a time of 1:11.314 second around the 2.54-mile road course. It will put the newly-formed Penske team on the pole for Saturday's 10-hour endurance event. It was Team Penske's 80th sports car pole and its first since May of 2009.

Quote: "First of all, thanks to Team Penske for this great opportunity. And thanks to my race engineer Jonathan (Duiguid). He was incredible. He was like, 'I know what you need. I know what you need' and it was perfect. And I can't forget about my teammates, Simon [Pagenaud] and Juan Pablo [Montoya]. Just everyone worked so hard to get us to this point. I had a big shunt about a week ago with this same car and everyone – all of the guys on the team and all of the guys with ORECA – worked their butts off to get this car ready to come here. It was a great team effort. Hopefully we'll finish the race the same way. The car was incredible. I had a little bit of understeer and I wasn’t expecting that. But once I figured out what I needed to do, then I said OK that's just gonna have to work. And now, we're really going to enjoy this moment because they worked really hard over the weekend to get everything ready. Tomorrow is still a long way to go."

Coverage:  The 20th Anniversary Petit Le Mans will be telecast live on FS1, FS2 and the FOX Sports Go app on Saturday (10:30 AM to 11:30 AM (FS1), 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM (FS2), 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM (FOX Sports GO) and 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM (FS2)).  Coverage can also be found on IMSA Radio.