Four Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Customer Racing entries qualified for Saturday’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Circuit of The Americas (COTA) where the Mercedes-AMG GT3 will compete on the 3.4-mile, 20-turn Formula 1 track. Ben Keating qualified the GT Daytona (GTD) championship-leading No. 33 Mercedes-AMG Team Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 on the inside of row four, and will be joined in the GTD field by the Mercedes-AMG GT3 entries of SunEnergy1 Racing, WeatherTech Racing and Lone Star Racing.
Keating’s top lap time of 2:08.033 in the No. 33 car was the quickest of the four Mercedes-AMG GT3 entries racing at COTA and placed him seventh overall in the GTD class. Keating will start the race before a hand-off to fourth-year co-driver Jeroen Bleekemolen.
Keating and Bleekemolen are looking for their third IMSA GTD win at COTA after back-to-back victories in 2014 and 2015. More recently, Keating, Bleekemolen and Mario Farnbacher won this year’s 12 Hours of Sebring, the first win for a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in its inaugural season of competition in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Keating will be joined in the top-10 of the GTD field by Kenny Habul in the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, who turned a top lap time of 2:08.515 in qualifying. The principal of the first-year SunEnergy1 Racing team, Habul made his COTA debut and participated in his first-ever IMSA qualifying session. Habul shares the SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Tristan Vautier, who was fastest in both of Thursday’s practice sessions in the No. 75 car.
Despite losing track time in practice on Thursday and Friday morning, Cooper MacNeil qualified 11th in the No. 50 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with a time of 2:08.697. MacNeil and co-driver Gunnar Jeannette will be shooting for two race wins in a row after earning their first victory of the year one race ago on the streets of Long Beach.
Lone Star Racing, making its 2017 IMSA season debut this weekend with the No. 80 Mercedes-AMG GT3, was also on a top-five pace in Friday’s pair of practice sessions but was left scrambling before qualifying today after being hit from behind by a Prototype competitor in this morning’s practice session. Quick work by the Lone Star team got the No. 80 on track in time, but qualifying driver Dan Knox could do no better than a lap time of 2:09.500 for 16th on the grid. The team never had a chance to apply its intended qualifying setup during the repairs, but will be ready for the race after some final fixes and setup changes this evening.
Heading into Saturday’s race, Mercedes-AMG leads the GTD Manufacturers Championship with 100 points, nine ahead of Porsche’s 91 points. Ferrari is third with 86 points.
In the IMSA GTD Driver and Team Championships, Keating, Bleekemolen and their No. 33 Mercedes-AMG Team Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 lead their respective championships with 98 points. The second-place Ferrari team and its drivers have 77 points.
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at COTA is scheduled to start at 2:35 p.m. CDT on Saturday, May 6. Live coverage, timing and scoring is available via IMSA.com and on the IMSA mobile app. Same-day television coverage of the race can be seen later on Saturday on FOX Sports 1 (FS1) at 7 p.m. EDT.
Ben Keating, Driver – No. 33 AMG-Team Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3: “I am disappointed because I had one really good lap that would have put us in third. We finished in eighth, a quarter-of-a-second out of P3 and it was from a mistake I made at the end of the back straight. And that’s it, one little mistake costs you 2/10ths and all of a sudden you are in eighth instead of third. It’s a very difficult place to pass, and I don’t expect a lot of full-course yellows – maybe none – but the Mercedes-AMG GT3 is good on tires, and this is a track where tires fall off sharply, so we feel like we will have a good race car. As always, we have the Mercedes-AMG Team Riley Motorsports pit crew behind the wall, and you can never count us out when it comes to that.”
Kenny Habul, Driver – No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “It was just one of those drama filled sessions. My radio fell from its mount into my lap early and then bounced down in front of the pedals, so I couldn’t get to the brake easily. I was trying to move it out of the way with my foot, braking with my heel, and the thing got jammed down there in the end. It kind of put me off a little bit. So, the session wasn’t perfect, there were probably three-quarters-of-a-second left in the car, but we couldn’t tie it all together. Tomorrow we will be OK, and at the end of the day it is my job to bring it back to Tristan in a good spot and let him go out there and go crazy.”
Cooper MacNeil, Driver – No. 50 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: "So far, I've had about 20-minutes in the car all weekend. We were really loose everywhere yesterday and the guys worked hard on the setup. Then, this morning we had a bearing issue that cost us the morning practice. We will start 11th out of 17, which is decent for not having many laps in the car. It is better than yesterday, we need to work on some minor issues, but the Riley Motorsports guys are working hard on it."
