The two Porsche 963s fielded by Porsche Penske Motorsport will tackle round five of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from the third row.

The 100-minute race on the twisty street circuit of Detroit starts on Saturday at 15:40 local time (21:40 CEST). Matt Campbell set the fifth fastest time in the 15-minute qualifying. His Porsche works driver colleague Nick Tandy finished sixth in the sister car. Gianmaria Bruni finished tenth with the hybrid prototype of the Porsche customer team JDC-Miller MotorSports. Bad luck due to a red flag at the wrong time threw AO Racing's 911 GT3 R called "Roxy" back to eighth place on the grid in the GTD Pro class.

The 2.662-kilometre Detroit Street Circuit, characterised by right-angled corners and unforgiving walls, once again provided the stage for a thrilling qualifying. With mild air temperatures of 24 degrees Celsius and only 35 degrees warm asphalt, the participants in the top GTP class felt their way closer and closer to the limit. One best time followed the other during the quarter-hour qualifying. The two Porsche 963s fielded by the Porsche Penske Motorsport works team also repeatedly appeared in the top third of the results table.

Matt Campbell managed to improve his time on his penultimate lap, but in the end he had to settle for fifth place on the grid. The Australian will share the number 6 Porsche 963 with Frenchman Mathieu Jaminet on Saturday. Nick Tandy had made it to the top line of the results list several times. A few seconds before the end of qualifying, he tackled one last flying lap, but was only able to improve in the first sector. Together with reigning IMSA champion Felipe Nasr from Brazil, "Mr. 24 Hours" will tackle the Detroit GP from sixth on the grid. Tandy is the first racing driver to win the four major 24-hour races at Daytona, Le Mans, the Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps.

"With three sessions and 3.5 hours on the track, we had an entertaining day here in Detroit," explains Jonathan Diuguid, Executive Director Porsche Penske Motorsport. In qualifying, we finished fifth and sixth on the grid. Even though we lacked a bit of performance on one lap, we could see in the second free practice session in much warmer temperatures that we are better over the longer distance. Nick Tandy and Matt Campbell did a great job in qualifying and avoided mistakes. Now we're looking at the race and thinking about how we can improve."

With the Porsche 963 fielded by JDC-Miller MotorSports, qualifying driver Gianmaria Bruni from Italy and Dutchman Tijmen van der Helm will start the short Detroit GP from tenth place. The American customer team wants to further optimize the setup of its hybrid prototype before the start of the race.

GT classes: Red flag costs "Roxy" a better grid position

In the GTD class, Klaus Bachler from Austria and Laurin Heinrich from Würzburg were unlucky: The ride of a Ferrari caused an interruption by the red flag after barely ten of 15 minutes of qualifying. At that moment, the pink 911 GT3 R of the two former Porsche Juniors was in ninth place – Bachler was warming up the tyres for the final attack. Qualifying was briefly released again in order to achieve the necessary minimum duration for qualifying, but did not allow any time improvement. The AO Racing customer team will therefore have to settle for eighth place on the grid for the Porsche christened "Roxy".

The Detroit GP in the free livestream

Round five of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on the 2.662-kilometre street circuit in Detroit is a sprint of just 100 minutes. The race starts on Saturday, June 1 at 3:40 p.m. local time (9:30 p.m. CEST). Fans outside North America can watch the race over the entire distance in the free live stream on IMSA.tv pursue.

Drivers' comments after qualifying

Matt Campbell (Porsche 963 #6): "Fifth place is a pretty good qualifying result for us in the number 6 Porsche, but we're a bit lacking absolute performance for a better result this weekend. Hopefully we can do a little more tomorrow with the strategy. This is my first time driving here in the streets of Detroit, a very interesting but also difficult street circuit – narrow and quite slow in the hairpin bends. We left our Porsche unscathed and are now ready for the race."

Nick Tandy (Porsche 963 #7): "Due to a change in the weather, the asphalt temperature went down. In qualifying, we struggled a bit to get the tyres up to temperature for the short session. All in all, the day went smoothly for us. The Porsche works quite well and the team did a great job. We have high hopes for tomorrow."

Gianmaria Bruni (Porsche 963 #85): "We've been chasing the right set-up for our race car since this morning. After the first free practice session, we changed something for the second session, which worked better. Then we made some adjustments, but unfortunately that went in the wrong direction. Now we'll put together all the data for tomorrow's race, then we'll see."

Klaus Bachler (Porsche 911 GT3 R #77): "Qualifying didn't exactly go our way. When the red flag came out, our tyres weren't 100 per cent ready. One or two laps later, they would have reached their temperature. But it is what it is. We can't change anything about that now. We're focused on tomorrow and we'll try to make the best of it in the race."

Results Qualifying

GTP class:
1. Van der Zande/Yelloly (NLD/GBR), Acura #93, 1m 05.672s
2nd Blomqvist/Braun (GBR/USA), Acura #60, 1m 05.908s
3rd Van der Linde/Wittmann (ZAF/DEU), BMW #25, 1m 06.078s
5th Campbell/Jaminet (AUS/FRA), Porsche 963 #6, 1m 06.496s
6th Nasr/Tandy (BRA/GBR), Porsche 963 #7, 1m 06.626s
10th Bruni/Van der Helm (ITA/NLD), Porsche 963 #85, 1m 07.682s

GTD-Pro class:
1st Rockenfeller/Priaulx (DEU/GBR), Ford #64, 1m 10.922s
2nd Mies/Vervisch (DEU/BEL), Ford #65, 1m 11.251s
3rd Telitz/Hawksworth (USA/GBR), Lexus #14, 1m 11.416s
8th Bachler/Heinrich (AUT/DEU), Porsche 911 GT3 R #77, 1m 13.346s

All results and championship standings at https://results.imsa.com.