Front Row Start for ESM Patrón at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park

 In an intense 15-minute qualifying session on Saturday, Extreme Speed Motorsports (ESM) traded barbs with the competition for pole position. Among those swapping the lead for the top spot was ESM’s Ryan Dalziel in the No. 1 Tequila Patrón Honda Performance Development (HPD) ARX-03b. At the end of the session, Dalziel settled for the second starting spot at 1:09.456 (127.453 mph), less than three-tenths behind the pole-winning car.

“All in all, this is a good qualifying result for us,” stated Dalziel. “We definitely were hungry for pole. In final practice, we had a really good balance in the car. I’m a little disappointed; we need to go look at the timing and see where the No. 42 car was better than us. I feel like our car is 99 percent there; even at 100 percent, I’m not sure we had enough for pole. The Honda chassis is always very good when it comes to tire life. With a two-hour, 45-minute race here, if we have a good strategy and good pit stops from the crew, hopefully we can get the Tequila Patrón cars up front. We definitely feel this is our weekend to turn the season around. The No. 2 car seems strong too. Hopefully we’ll get both cars up front and go for that podium.
 
The Tequila Patrón-sponsored Honda prototypes qualified second and fourth for Sunday’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix, the seventh round of TUDOR United SportsCar Championship at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP).
 
The No. 1 Tequila Patrón team earned its second front-row starting position this year. In May, the team started second at the Detroit street circuit on Belle Isle. Scott Sharp will start tomorrow’s race for the No. 1 team and Dalziel will drive the second stint.
 
Johannes van Overbeek, co-driver of the No. 2 Tequila Patrón HPD, lapped the 2.459-mile, 10-turn permanent road course in 1:10.136 (126.218 mph), less than a half-second behind the pole position. Ed Brown will start the race for the No. 2 team from the fourth position and van Overbeek will drive second.

“The ESM Tequila Patrón Honda HPD felt really good in our fourth-place qualifying effort today,” added van Overbeek. “I tried to get the most out of it. We weren’t able to simulate a qualifying run and that would have helped me as a driver because it is a whole different world on new tires and light fuel than it is in practice.”
 
The weekend started strong for the Florida-based team. During Friday’s opening session, the two-car, Tequila Patrón-sponsored team was second and third. Traffic proved to be a bit of a hindrance in the second practice session and the team dropped to sixth and seventh on the sheets. During the lone practice on Saturday morning, Dalziel topped the charts and van Overbeek showed a strong run in fourth position.
 
The two-hour, 45-minute TUDOR United SportsCar Championship Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance is the seventh race of 2014 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship. Green flag is 2:05 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 13.  
 
Television coverage of the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix starts at 2 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1. 

Adam Sinclair