No. 60 Takes GTP Pole at Indianapolis; Clarke, Inter Europol Lead LMP2 Qualifying; GTD PRO, GTD Grids Set by Team Points
By John Oreovicz and David Phillips
IMSA Wire Service
INDIANAPOLIS – Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian is determined to close the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a race win.
Tom Blomqvist took the first step in that direction Saturday evening at Indianapolis Motor Speedway by securing the Motul Pole Award for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks – the penultimate round of the WeatherTech Championship season.
Driving the No. 60 Acura ARX-06 he shares with Colin Braun, Blomqvist lapped the 14-corner, 2.439-mile IMS road course in 1 minute, 14.674 seconds for an average speed of 117.582 mph. Blomqvist and Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class points leader Jack Aitken were the only drivers to break the 1:15 barrier, with Aitken’s 1:14.975 (117.110 mph) effort good enough to secure the outside of the front row for Sunday’s 2-hour, 40-minute sprint race.
It was the seventh career WeatherTech Championship pole for Blomqvist and the 25th for Meyer Shank Racing, which will make its 399th and 400th IMSA starts Sunday with its No. 60 and 93 entries.
The No. 93 with drivers Nick Yelloly and Renger van der Zande won earlier this year and arrived at Indianapolis ranked third in the GTP driver standings,185 points behind Aitken and separated by Laurin Heinrich, who will line up eighth at Indianapolis in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 qualified by Kevin Estre.
After qualifying, Aitken leads Heinrich by 127 points and the No. 93 Acura duo (who qualified fifth) by 191. Braun and Blomqvist are winless thus far in 2026, 10th in the standings and out of championship contention.
Dodging a few damp spots on the track thanks to an earlier shower, Blomqvist clocked the pole-winning lap with a little less than three minutes remaining in the 15-minute GTP qualifying session. Meanwhile, Aitken improved from fifth to third to second on his qualifying laps as he took the checkered flag, bumping the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde to third.
“Obviously, the team have done a fantastic job leading up to this event,” Blomqvist remarked. “We had some new concepts to try out in practice, and they seemed to be working. The weather was a bit of an unknown and could have thrown a curveball there, but thankfully we didn’t need to gamble too much.
“This track is notoriously hard to warm up the right-side tires,” he added. “I felt like I only really had one good shot at it there and the car just performed. I guess I did a good job myself. I managed to get most out of it on that lap when the tires were at their best – that was the key today. It’s a shorter race, so being in the pole position, we’re in a great spot to get a victory. That’s going to be the goal tomorrow.”
Aitken, Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti won from pole position at Indianapolis last year when the race was a six-hour round of the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup. Aitken was pleased with his qualifying performance.
“The run was good,” he said. “We had to work pretty hard through practice to find a rhythm with the car. I was really happy with the changes we’ve made, and I think we can be really proud of the front-row start next to the No. 60. It’s a good spot for tomorrow, obviously, and hopefully we can keep ourselves toward the pointy end and out of trouble. That’s the aim, always, in these sprint races.”
Clarke Extends Run of LMP2 Motul Pole Awards
Jeremy Clarke will start the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks in a familiar spot, namely pole position in the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category. For the fifth time in the past seven races, the Californian posted the fastest qualifying time of the session in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07 to head a tightly bunched LMP2 field that saw no fewer than seven drivers within a second of Clarke’s best.
Quick as he was, Clarke’s best lap of 1:17.555 was upward of a second off the LMP2 track record, reflecting a track still coated with a measure of rubber following the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race despite a brief rain shower – accompanied by some lighting – that delayed the WeatherTech Championship qualifying session.
“Leading up to qualifying we weren’t sure what was going to happen with the rain,” Clarke explained. “We got a little bit lucky with the lightning and kind of pushed off the start, so we were able to get kind of a dry track. But even going out, I was just a little bit hesitant.
“I was personally expecting the track to go a little faster with the cooler temperatures, but the grip just wasn’t quite what we expected. I had to take it step by step, put corner by corner together and just focus. I knew where I was strong and where I was weak, so I just tried to consistently do what I needed to do in the strong parts.”
Daniel Goldburg fell just short of dislodging Clarke from pole, as he was credited with a best lap of 1:17.713. All the more impressive is it was only Goldberg’s second-best lap of the qualifying session, an earlier lap of 1:17.600 forfeited after the No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA caused a red flag in the morning practice session. PJ Hyett was third in the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA at 1:17.770 with Misha Goikhberg (No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen) and Tobi Lutke (No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA) also in the 1:17s ahead of the LMP2 championship points-leading No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR ORECA of George Kurtz, who posted a best lap of 1:18.046.
With Clarke and co-driver Tom Dillmann coming off back-to-back wins at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Road America, along with collecting 35 points for Saturday’s pole position, the Inter Europol drivers and team have unofficially moved within 26 points of the LMP2 lead.
While Clarke and Dillmann will be looking for their third consecutive win, they’ll also have an eye on their championship rivals throughout the two-hour, 40-minute race.
“In these short sprint races, qualifying is super important,” Clarke said. “So, grabbing pole is super important here. At the end of the day, if we finish in front of CrowdStrike in this race and the next race at Petit Le Mans, we’ll have a better chance of winning the championship. I think the primary goal is to make sure we’re in the position to stay in front of them.”
GT Grids Set by Team Points Due to Weather Delay
Lightning in the area just prior to the scheduled start of WeatherTech Championship qualifying brought a brief halt to the proceedings and forced both the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) and GTD PRO qualifying sessions to be abandoned. Those grids for Sunday’s race will be set based on team championship points, with the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo shared by Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen starting from the GTD PRO pole position and the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 co-driven by Russell Ward and Philip Ellis leading the GTD field to green.
The 44-car field will take the green flag for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at 3:10 ET Sunday. Complete live coverage airs on NBC or may be streamed on Peacock in the U.S., with international streams available through IMSA.TV or the official IMSA YouTube channel.