Jack Hawksworth claims historic pole at Watkins Glen
It has been an incredibly long day at Watkins Glen, but Jack Hawksworth made it count. Despite being forced to wait seven or eight hours after morning practice, the Vasser Sullivan Racing w/Dreyer & Reinbold pilot smashed the qualifying record with a 1:43.701 lap. This stunning performance earned him his 17th IMSA pole, officially moving him past Ben Keating for the most in the modern era.
The conditions were bizarre, with a schedule shuffle pushing the session into the cool of the evening and track workers removing curbing at the Bus Stop. Hawksworth had to adapt to entering a fourth-gear corner at 110 mph while flirting with the guardrail, but he nailed it. While Harry King in the AO Racing Porsche and Neil Verhagen in the Paul Miller Racing BMW kept things tense, the Lexus held firm.
Things were less settled in the GTD class, where a red flag caused by an incident for the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG prematurely ended the session. Following IMSA rules, the grid was set by championship points, handing the top spot to the Heart of Racing Team’s Aston Martin. It is not the way Zacharie Robichon wanted to claim the front, but as he noted, it is a great place to start a chaotic race.
