Story By: HALEIGH JORDAN / THE HEART OF RACING – ELKHART LAKE, WI – The Heart of Racing (HOR) No. 23 Aston Martin will lead the GT field to the green flag during Sunday’s IMSA SportsCar Weekend two hour and 40 minute race (USA Network 11:00 am ET). The HOR sister car, the No. 27 Heart of Racing entry will start from fifth in class.
The IMSA SportsCar Weekend started with two practice sessions on Friday. The No. 23 Aston Martin team of Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas set the fast lap during the first practice of the weekend with a 2:05.206-second lap, a great start following the team’s double win at Lime Rock Park in July. During the second afternoon practice session, both Gunn and Riberas went through a series of different set up changes to prepare for Saturday’s 15 minute qualifying session.
Riberas qualified for the duo setting a fast lap of 2:02.918 seconds, breaking the Road America GTD PRO track record of 2:05.365 seconds. Riberas scored his second pole award at Road America, the previous being in 2016. The Spanish driver also clinched his fifth IMSA pole award, first since Circuit of the Americas in 2016.
“It’s been a tough year so far,” said Riberas. “A lot of things went against us in terms of strategy, some mistakes, and some things that didn’t quite work for our car and we had to overcome those. At the end of the day IMSA is a championship where momentum plays a massive role in terms of performance and right now I feel like we have that momentum after the win at Lime Rock. The team is doing a phenomenal job, they got the car ready after the big crash with Ross and it just feels very special to be able to give them back a reward for all those super long hours.”
Roman De Angelis and Marco Sorensen teamed up once again in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin. Sorensen made his first laps at the National Park of Speed during Friday’s first practice session battling against the many red flag periods. The duo fought through significant understeer in both practice sessions, but changes called by the engineers saw the car continue to improve by the time the second practice session was over.
De Angelis tied for his best starting position at the National Park of Speed at fifth. The Canadian set a fast time of 2:04.397 seconds. The No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin will take the green flag tenth overall in the GT category.
“We haven’t been great this weekend so far in terms of pace,” said De Angelis. “We just seem to be lacking somewhere compared to the others and our sister car as well. We are still trying to sort that out. I didn’t have the best qualifying run, I think we’re tenth overall. Not great when our championship rivals are on pole, but we’ll see what we can solve tonight. The Heart of Racing guys will figure something out and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
The IMSA SportsCar Weekend will take the green flag at 11:10 am ET on Sunday August 6th.