Andretti Rallycross’ Tanner Foust dominated day one at the Cooper Tires ARX of Mid-Ohio, the final round of the 2019 Americas Rallycross (ARX) Championship.
Racing the No. 34 Rockstar Energy Drink Volkswagen Beetle R, ARX Championship leader Foust took the hole shot from pole position in Q1 and Q2 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course to lead both of his qualifying races to take maximum qualifying points from Saturday.Â
Subaru Motorsport USA’s Chris Atkinson won the first race of the weekend in the No. 55 WRX STI and was just 5 hundredths of a second slower than Atkinson in the total Q1 times, but it’s his Subaru teammate, Finland’s Joni Wiman, who holds second in the day one Intermediate Classification, with a pair of P3 times. Norwegian Andreas Bakkerud overtook Andretti’s Cabot Bigham for the Q2 race 1 lead and was second fastest behind Foust. The No.13 Subaru driver is P4 at the end of the first day.
It was a challenging first day for the Loenbro Motorsports squad. Steve Arpin battled in the traffic and took a best time on P4 in Q2. He is in P5, in front of Sweden’s Patrik Sandell – Foust’s closest challenger in the ARX Championship points – Bigham and Loenbro’s PeCoy. Racing the No.03 Ford Fiesta ST, PeCoy was left on the line in Q2 and struggled to make up for lost time.
In ARX2, Indycar star Sage Karam took the fastest time for the Dreyer & Reinbold Racing team and is the top qualifier heading into this afternoon’s semi-finals.