IMSA WEATHERTECH SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIP: TIRERACK.COM BATTLE ON THE BRICKS

September 20, 2025

Nick Boulle

Dan Harper

Casper Stevenson

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We're pleased to be joined by our Motul Pole Award winners here at the Tirerack.com Battle on the Bricks. We'll start with our pole winner in the GTD class, Casper Stevenson. Casper's best lap was 1:23.088 seconds. This is his first career pole in IMSA competition, ninth pole for the Heart of Racing team. Heart of Racing has gone on to win the race following three of its last four pole positions. Casper is also the sixth different driver in six races to win the pole in GTD, top 8 in the class were covered by .843 seconds.

Casper, congratulations. First pole position. What does that mean to you, and how does it set you up for tomorrow?

CASPER STEVENSON: Yeah, thank you. I'm really pleased. I think the car has been capable all year. So to finally put it together and get the pole was really good.

I think it's going to be a tough race tomorrow. I think the Aston is really good in qually, but I think others will be strong in the race as well.

Yeah, just try and execute. Two great teammates at the end, and I think we can be up there.

THE MODERATOR: We'd slide over to our GTD Pro pole winner, Dan Harper in the No. 48. Dan's lap was 1:23.259 seconds. Also his first career IMSA pole position, the 25th pole for Paul Miller Racing. This is the team's second in 2025. It had a pole at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Also the team's second pole here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, had the GTD pole in 2023. The entire 11-car GTD Pro field was covered by .8 seconds.

Dan, congratulations. First career pole. What does it mean to you, and what do you think it'll look like tomorrow?

DAN HARPER: Yeah, thank you very much. Always nice to get that first one, the monkey off your back. It's something I've been targeting all season. We did it in the 48 crew. We decided that I would do all the qualifyings this year to allow me to fully focus on that task on the weekend and give Max the job of bringing it home at the end of the race.

Unfortunately, Neil got one before me, but finally it was nice to get it, and the team have done a mega job, and like Casper said, just putting it all together. The car has been fast all season, and very nice feeling.

THE MODERATOR: The first pole for the team this year at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park was won by Neil Verhagen in the No. 1 car.

We'll slide over to LMP2 pole winner, Nick Boulle in the No. 2 United Autosports Oreca LMP 207. Nick's best lap was 1:17.846 seconds. This is his second career IMSA pole. His first pole came right here at Indianapolis last year, led a 1-2 qualifying sweep, which was a first for United Autosports, and the top 7 in LMP2 are covered by .975 seconds.

Something about qualifying on this racetrack seemed to work for you. What are you looking forward to tomorrow?

NICK BOULLE: Well, looking forward to starting on the front row for once. We've had a bit of a rough year, so it feels good to bring something with a 1 back to the team.

I think it's this place. It's really fun to hustle a P2 car around. We go to a lot of different tracks that are high speed, and this place kind of demands something different. You drive the car a little bit differently, and it's really rewarding. So happy to be here and starting up front.

Q. Nick, your assessment? Obviously the red flag at the beginning of the session shortened it. How did that change your strategy or what you had to do?

NICK BOULLE: You know, as soon as the red flag came out, it just made it very clear we were only going to have a couple build laps to get the tires in the window and then two goes. It kind of amped up the pressure. It seems like somebody made a mistake and brought out the red. I find that kind of situation -- it's challenging and it's fun. You know you have a very limited time frame to get what you can, and it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough today.

Q. If you could talk about tomorrow a little bit. You've got your teammate starting next to you. You said it hasn't been a great season so far. How do you feel going into tomorrow for your chances?

NICK BOULLE: I feel good. I think we've got a car to fight with. I think the traffic at the start will be interesting with the GTP cars. It certainly was last year. This is a pretty scrappy place, though. You have to hustle the car especially in a P2 car compared to some other places that are super fast and flowy. So getting through traffic we have to be really eyes up and pay attention to the rhythm.

But hopefully we stay clean and I can get Juan and Ben a car that we can go fight with.

Q. Dan, practice, you were seventh and tenth in the sessions. Was it a different program you were working on compared to your team car, or did you have something you were saving for qualifying?

DAN HARPER: I think it's very hot here, so for the race, there's potentially some rain coming, but we expect still high temperatures. So we've sort of played the practice sessions looking for that long-run pace, and for us, it's really important to save the rear tires.

Considering we've had the car in a much different window through the practice sessions than what we've put on for qualifying, we were lucky that the sister car was here a week or maybe a couple of weeks ago for the pretest. We unfortunately couldn't make it, we were racing elsewhere.

But it gave us a very good -- like they were able to work there on the qualifying setup, and we were able to sort of put that in, and it seemed to work okay.

Yeah, we've sort of planned for tomorrow for the race, and we executed today with a different setup.

Q. Casper, your first IMSA pole coming at a place like this, how awesome is it to have this be where you get your first pole, at a venue like this?

CASPER STEVENSON: Yeah, it's a great place to get it. Would have liked to get it a bit earlier in the year, but I'm happy to get it here. Hopefully I can get some more, and like Dan said, the monkey off the back, so hopefully the next one should come a bit easier.

Q. Dan, could you go over the tire strategy that you and/or the team used for qualifying, switching back and forth, using both sticker and scuffed tires?

DAN HARPER: Yeah, so it was actually two sets of brand-new sticker tires through qualifying. We've sort of planned for tomorrow for the race that it's always a big advantage on the out lap, especially for having a set of scuffed tires.

All season long really we've had the program, let's say, in qualifying to go with two sets. You always seem to -- no matter how good a driver, I think you always seem to improve on the second set. You always put the lap a bit more together, and obviously the points available in qualifying are very important for the championship. We've put a lot of focus on that.

Today we had the same run plan with two sets. I was lucky today that after the first set we were on provisional pole. There was still some cars circulating very fast and putting almost green sectors, personal best sectors together, so we went out in the second one with a plan to still try and improve the lap time, which I did, very marginally. It also means that we have only one flying lap on that set of tires for tomorrow.