Ohio

Both MPC classes set new track records in Mid-Ohio qualifying

Published

2 years ago

June 8, 2024

Both MPC classes set new track records in Mid-Ohio qualifying

Michael de Quesada claimed his second consecutive Motul Pole Award in the Grand Sport (GS) class of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge with a new track record Saturday at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

De Quesada lapped the technical road course in 1m26.262s (94.233mph) in the No. 69 Motorsports In Action McLaren Artura GT4, in qualifying for Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Four Hours of Mid-Ohio. That follows his pole-winning effort for last month’s event at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna, a race he and co-driver Jesse Lazare went on to win. Lazare also won the pole at Sebring International Raceway in March, giving the No. 69 McLaren three straight for the season.

De Quesada expressed surprise that the Mid-Ohio pole lap was not even quicker, considering the entire 2.258-mile circuit was repaved in November.

“For some reason, the track is really slick this weekend,” he noted.

Paul Holton (No. 46 Team TGM Aston Martin Vantage GT4) was the first driver to break Nate Stacy’s 2020 GS track record by notching a 1m26.613s (93.851mph) effort at the halfway point of the 15-minute qualifying session. De Quesada lowered the benchmark to 1m26.480s with six minutes remaining.

Jared Thomas briefly took the No. 3 JTR Motorsports Engineering Porsche 718 GT4 RS Clubsport to the top of the charts, posting a 1m26.469s lap with a little over 90 seconds to go. But barely five seconds later, de Quesada undercut that with the pole-winning lap. Thomas secured the outside front row starting spot in the No. 3 Porsche he shares with Nick Shaeffer.

De Quesada’s pole lap was less than a second better than the quickest lap in the Touring Car (TCR) class. The classes will be split for the start of Sunday’s four-hour race but could quickly intermingle.

“I noticed in practice that the TCR cars are quick around this track,” de Quesada said. “It’s definitely going to make for tough racing, in my opinion. They’re very closely matched with us on the straights and through the corners, so I think the start and working through back markers is going to be a bit complicated. It’s good to see, and hopefully we can get through tomorrow with a clean race and good racing.

“Every race weekend presents its own challenge, and we just have to conquer them,” he added. “I just hope that we take home good points every weekend to slowly chip away and end on top of the championship at the end of the year.”

Wittmer obliterates TCR track record to extend Honda pole streak

The Mid-Ohio track repave proved beneficial to drivers qualifying in the Touring Car (TCR) class, as no fewer than a dozen eclipsed the old class record. None did better than Karl Wittmer, whose 1m27.103s lap (93.323mph) in the No. 93 Montreal Motorsport Group Honda Civic FL5 TCR shattered the previous standard by more than 1.7s.

It delivered Honda a fourth straight TCR pole at Mid-Ohio and gave the veteran Canadian team new to IMSA a second straight Motul Pole Award following the one earned by Bryan Ortiz in the No. 6 Civic at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Ortiz will start alongside his teammate on the front row in the 16-car TCR field on Sunday.

“Most of the paddock looks at us as IMSA rookies but these guys have been around since 1972,” Wittmer said. “They’ve been a long time running in Canada and worldwide. It’s nice to finally be here and prove that our experience has meaning.”

Wittmer jumped to the top of the leaderboard on his fourth lap, at 1m27.795s. Following a cooldown lap, he found the track ahead wide open and decided to push harder – against the crew’s wishes.

“I put the initial lap down early and then a free track showed up and, well, I’m a driver,” he said with a smile. “Even though they told me not to go, I went. Saddled up and sent it.”

Wittmer’s pole-winning lap was 0.181s better than Robert Wickens in the No. 33 Bryan Herta Autosport with Curb-Agajanian Hyundai Elantra N TCR. The Hyundai, however, was found to not meet minimum ride height standards in post-qualifying technical inspection and moved to the rear of the grid. That moved Ortiz, who qualified third in the No. 6 MMG Honda he shares with LP Montour, to the second starting position.

“It is going to be a long race,” said Wittmer, whose No. 93 co-driver is Dai Yoshihara. “This new surface is extremely smooth but it’s also a little bit greasy as well. We are going to lack grip so it’s all about patience and just trying to find consistency.”

The O’Reilly Auto Parts Four Hours of Mid-Ohio streams live on Peacock in the U.S. and on IMSA.tv outside the U.S. beginning at 12:35 p.m. ET Sunday.

RESULTS

Source link

Click to comment

Ohio

Ohio woman sentenced in $775,000 Medicaid scheme

Published

9 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

COLUMBUS — A Lake County woman was sentenced this morning to jail time and ordered to pay $775,000 in restitution for fraudulently billing Medicaid, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced. “She inflated her earnings through brazen fraud, but her scheme burst wide open when our investigators got the case,” Yost said. “Cheating taxpayers comes with […]

Source link

Ohio

‘Catastrophic’ Ohio farm fire kills 6,000 hogs and pigs, officials say

Published

21 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

‘Catastrophic’ Ohio farm fire kills 6,000 hogs and pigs, officials say

A wind-swept blaze at an Ohio hog farm complex caused “catastrophic” damage and left thousands of pigs dead, fire officials said, marking another devastating barn inferno contributing to the deaths of millions of animals in recent years.

The massive fire occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at Fine Oak Farms in Union Township, Madison County, located west of Ohio’s capital of Columbus, according to the Central Townships Joint Fire District. Fire crews received a report of a barn fire shortly before 12 p.m. local time.

The incident was later upgraded to a commercial structure fire after Chief Brian Bennington observed a “large column of smoke visible from a distance” and requested additional resources. Multiple local fire departments, along with several other emergency agencies, were called to the scene.

“What our crews encountered upon arrival was a very difficult and heartbreaking incident,” Bennington said in a statement on Feb. 26.

The fire chief described the facility as a large farm complex used for hog production consisting of five large agricultural buildings, including four that housed about 7,500 hogs. When crews arrived at the scene, they found two of the barns engulfed in flames, Bennington said.

Crews were challenged by windy conditions that significantly impacted fire suppression efforts, according to Bennington. Three barns were destroyed in the fire, and about 6,000 hogs and pigs were killed.

Firefighters saved one barn and about 1,500 hogs, the fire chief added. No injuries were reported in the incident.

Bennington highlighted the assistance of the farming community throughout Madison and Clark counties, as multiple farmers responded with water trucks to help with water supply efforts. “Rural Ohio’s agricultural community is tight-knit, and they truly step up when one of their own is in need,” he said.

The incident remains under investigation, and the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office will determine the fire’s cause and origin. Bennington said there is no suspicion of arson and no ongoing threat to the public at this time.

‘Rapidly changing fire behavior conditions’

Heavy smoke from the fire could be seen for miles, and Bennington said first-arriving units were met with fire conditions coming from the opposite side of the hog farm complex.

The fire chief noted that the incident required extensive water-shuttle operations due to rural water-supply limitations in the area. Crews attempted to cut the fire off by deploying multiple handlines and using an aerial device, but “faced extremely challenging conditions throughout the incident,” according to Bennington.

Sustained winds of about 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph accelerated the fire’s spread, Bennington said. The high winds made it “extremely difficult” to contain forward fire progression and created “rapidly changing fire behavior conditions” across the agricultural complex, he added.

After about four to five hours, the fire was contained by fire personnel from four different counties, according to the fire chief.

“Unfortunately, the fire resulted in catastrophic damage to the business,” Bennington said in an earlier statement on Feb. 25. “A significant portion of the agricultural structures were destroyed.”

Latest major fire to impact an Ohio hog farm

The incident at Fine Oak Farms is the latest major fire to cause significant damage to an Ohio hog farm in recent years.

In August 2024, about 1,100 pigs were killed in Versailles, a village about 50 miles northwest of Dayton, Ohio, according to data from the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute. In March 2022, about 2,000 hogs died in a barn fire at Kenneth Scholl Hog Farm in Brown Township, just west of Columbus.

Before the fire at Fine Oak Farms, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that other barn fires in Ohio this year killed 162 sheep, horses, cows, chickens, and other animals.

Hundreds of thousands of animals killed in barn fires each year

Data from the Animal Welfare Institute shows that hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in barn fires across the country each year. Since 2013, over 9 million farm animals have been killed in barn fires, according to the organization.

As of Feb. 26, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that 118,738 farm animals have died in U.S. barn fires this year, including the incident at Fine Oak Farms. The majority of farm animals killed were chickens in separate incidents in North Carolina and Georgia in January, and another incident in Missouri earlier this month.

“Most fatal barn fires occurred in colder states, particularly the Upper Midwest and the Northeast. New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois had the highest number of barn fires, respectively,” according to the organization. “The amount of cold weather a state experienced appeared to be a greater factor in the prevalence of barn fires than the intensity of a state’s animal agriculture production.”

In an updated report on farm animal deaths due to barn fires in 2025, the Animal Welfare Institute said more than 2.53 million farm animals were killed in barn fires from 2022 to 2024. The organization noted that the high death toll was “driven primarily” by fires at large operations that housed several thousand to over 1 million farm animals.

The majority of deaths in these incidents during that period, over 98%, were farmed birds, such as chickens and turkeys, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. But in 2023, a massive fire at a west Texas dairy farm became the single deadliest event involving livestock in the state’s history and the deadliest cattle fire in America in at least a decade.

18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas. At the time, Roger Malone, who is the former mayor of Dimmitt, called the incident “mind-boggling.”

“I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here. It’s a real tragedy,” Malone said.

Contributing: Rick Jervis, USA TODAY; Shahid Meighan, Columbus Dispatch

Source link

Ohio

Ohio’s LaRose pushes back on voter fraud critics, Democrats

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Ohio’s LaRose pushes back on voter fraud critics, Democrats

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose discussed voter fraud and Ohio’s efforts to prevent it during a recent radio appearance.

LaRose appeared on “The Bill Cunningham” radio show, where he defended the state’s efforts to minimize voter fraud. A clip posted on X shows audio of LaRose arguing that policies aimed at preventing voter fraud are necessary even though cases are rare.

Here’s what to know.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose says voter fraud in Ohio is rare, compares prevention efforts to TSA security

In the clip, LaRose says that Democrats claim voter fraud is rare, and should be ignored.

“The left claims that voter fraud is rare, so we should just ignore it,” he said. “Well, airplane hijackings are also rare — we don’t abolish the TSA. The reason why we keep voter fraud rare in states like Ohio because we do these very things that they’re trying to take away from me.”

LaRose announced the inaugural meeting of the new Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which replaces what he called the flawed Ohio Elections Commission, in January 2026. The new committee, he says, will be used in “enforcing Ohio’s election laws, reviewing alleged violations, and ensuring accountability in matters relating to voting.”

In October 2025, LaRose said that he forwarded more than 1,000 cases of voter fraud to the U.S. Department of Justice. The cases involved 1,084 noncitizen individuals who appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio, and 167 noncitizens who appear to have also cast a ballot in a federal election since 2018.

In February 2026, President Donald Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” elections. He also accused Democrats of bringing migrants into the United States to illegally vote, a claim that is not backed by evidence, USA TODAY reports.

Voter fraud in the U.S. is considered rare nationwide, according to NPR, but there are still debates from both political sides on how frequently it occurs.

What is voter fraud?

Electoral fraud is defined as illegally interfering with the process of an election, according to Ballotpedia. This includes in-person voter fraud, absentee or mail ballots and illegal voter suppression.

Criminal penalties can include fines or imprisonment for up to five years, according to U.S. code. In Ohio, election interference can carry a felony of the fourth degree, according to Ohio Code.

Voter fraud is often a topic of debate among Democrats and Republicans, where organizations such as the conservative Heritage Foundation maintains a database claiming to show nearly 1,500 cases of election fraud since the year 2000.

Meanwhile, research by law professor Justin Leavitt published in 2014 found 31 cases of in-person voter fraud among billions of ballots cast from 2000–2014, according to Ballotpedia.

Source link