BRASELTON, Ga. (Oct. 10, 2025) – An interview with Motul Pole Award winners of the four IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes at Motul Petit Le Mans.
THE MODERATOR: Joined now by our overall class pole winner for Motul Petit Le Mans, Tom Blomqvist.
Tom, congratulations. Talking about the pole here today, tell us about how that session went, how it set you guys up for the race tomorrow.
TOM BLOMQVIST: Yeah, I mean, I guess speaking about the session, I love qualifying, especially around here. It’s a small track. Obviously throughout practice we probably never, ever get a clear lap.
I think we’re, like, what, two seconds faster than we’ve been all weekend. It’s just such a thrill when you take the fuel out of the tires, new tires, no traffic to worry about, you can warm up the tires in the correct way. You kind of hold on.
It’s one of those laps where it rewards a little bit of commitment and bravery. Yeah, I just really enjoy driving it. Thankfully the guys gave me a good car, a good enough car to get the job done.
It’s only one small portion of the job we need to do this weekend. It’s more a nice thing for our egos in the team, right? We’re going to sleep a bit better than if we were down the back.
Tomorrow is when we need to kind of get the job done really.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll go to questions.
Q. Tom, you parked with four minutes to go. Is it because you didn’t think there was anything left to improve or other guys couldn’t beat your time?
TOM BLOMQVIST: Yeah, I didn’t feel like I could go any faster. To be honest, I probably should have stopped even a lap earlier. Yeah, you just know your tires, they’re not good for many laps, especially around here.
So when you see that delta starting to not go in a friendly direction, then you kind of feel it underneath you.
Yeah, there’s no point in driving around. You’re not going to find a miracle out of nowhere. I boxed. We need to use those tires tomorrow at some point. Have to keep them as fresh as possible.
Q. Can you kind of expand on this being a high-commitment track.
TOM BLOMQVIST: Yeah, I mean, I was quite surprised to hear that. It’s a really short sector, obviously turn one. I guess I got pole by I think just under 2/10ths. That’s where it was done (smiling).
Yeah, I mean, I had a good car. Our car’s generally pretty friendly. I’ve had a lot of confidence. I think I’ve been pretty good all weekend in that sector.
Yeah, you kind of just have to trust that the car’s going to stick. You just got to carry a lot of speed into the corner and kind of hope you come out the other side (laughter).
Yeah, there’s a lot of trust you have to put in the car. My car was kind of good enough to take that speed. Went in the first lap, I thought, Okay, it’s going well, it’s going to stick. The next lap try a little bit harder. It was fine.
Yeah, it’s fun. It’s definitely a fun place to send it, I guess.
Q. Tom, single lap pace clearly there. What is the long run pace of the car and how is it at night?
TOM BLOMQVIST: I would say typically you can see obviously this year we’ve had a few pole positions. It’s definitely an area that our car seems to excel in, let’s say.
Honestly, we put a lot of work into making our car as good as possible in the race. We didn’t really focus too much on qualifying.
But yeah, around here it’s super important. We know we’re going to have some super stiff competition. The 31, the two Porsches, have been looking really good, especially on their long-run performance. We know honestly I think they’re looking actually a little bit better than us at the moment. We’ve also got a really fast car, especially in the night.
Yeah, we’re relatively confident, that’s for sure. It’s difficult to get a read on what everyone’s do in practice, right? It’s a good sign that when we send the car as fast as we kind of can go and we’re at the pointy end, that obviously a good sign. That typically carries regardless, but we still have to do 40-odd laps on a set of tires. That’s going to be extremely important.
Yeah, I think it’s going to be a good fight tomorrow.
Q. Tom, I know you can only run your own race. Having said that, are you confident that race control will continue to be strict on avoidable contact, blocking incidents, particularly with the stakes being much higher at Petit tomorrow?
TOM BLOMQVIST: I have drivers briefing after this. I’ll find out if anything has changed.
We go into the race expecting the same as Indianapolis, which obviously I think everyone is still adapting to because it is, let’s say, a different way we have to go racing now. Some form’s a little less instinctive, as well. As drivers, we have to be a bit more on our toes, be a bit smarter I guess in a way.
A number of people being called out at Indy. I’m sure a lot of them learned their lessons. Yeah, find out soon if they’re going to be a little bit more lenient or if it’s going to stay the same.
We have to adapt and not get caught up in any of it.
THE MODERATOR: Tom, congratulations.
TOM BLOMQVIST: Thank you.
THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everybody. Get started here.
Lorenzo Patrese, congratulations. As I mentioned first career pole position. Prestigious race. What does it mean to you to get that starting spot and how do you expect things will play out for your team tomorrow?
LORENZO PATRESE: I mean, it’s amazing. It’s really good feeling. We’ve had a quite unfortunate season till now. Really unlucky. It feels amazing. The car really felt good.
For sure tomorrow we have quite a good starting space. It’s really tough race, really long, so let’s just hope things turn out well and then we’ll see the last few hours.
THE MODERATOR: No. 48 M4 GTE EVO Dan Harper. Tell us about maybe how that session played out for your team, what your expectations are heading into 10 hours ever rating tomorrow.
DAN HARPER: Thank you. Obviously nice to start up front. Second time in a row. Especially here, I think it’s quite difficult to overtake. Having that track position is probably quite key. But obviously it’s a very long race. Last night was my first laps here in the dark.
With the Prototypes coming quick and quite frequently, it was quite tricky to manage. I think that will also be quite an important factor throughout the whole race, but especially when it gets dark at night.
We have a lot of focus on that during the practice sessions. We focused also on the race pace because tire deg here is quite high, at least for us. We hope it’s the same for the rest and we go for a good result tomorrow.
THE MODERATOR: Steven Thomas, obviously coming off your third straight win at Indianapolis. You guys have had good success here also previously. Another pole position. Just take us through kind of this little chunk of the season as we wind things up, kind of how we’ve gotten to this point, what you’re looking forward to.
STEVEN THOMAS: Yeah, I mean, first part of the season wasn’t so great for us. I think we turned it around. Three-peating in Indy, we were really on top of our game. Now the car is quite good.
Being on pole here, I think it’s very similar to the turnaround we had last year. We won the final two races last year and won the Endurance Cup. We’re a little further away in the Endurance Cup this year, but it’s still attainable. We’re hoping to race well and finish the season strong.
THE MODERATOR: Congratulations. Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
