Pierre Kaffer and James Davison have taken first blood in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship in GTLM and GTD respectively as they claimed the poles for the first GT only race.
Fresh from taking victory at Road America, Kaffer and the Risi Competizione team kept the momentum going as they set a time of 1:43.797 at Virginia International Raceway to score their second pole in three races and knock the Team RLL BMW off provisional pole and into second place.
Interestingly, it is the ninth different driver on pole in this TUDOR Championship season and shows that the 15 minute qualifying sessions are anyones game.
“It’s not so easy to just step in the car, like at a track here at VIR, where it is important to drive really on the right line,” said Kaffer. “The guys did a fantastic job after this morning’s incident, and this was one of the best cars I’ve ever had.”
The BMW of Bill Auberlen and Andy Priaulx will start second after finishing 0.2 seconds behind the Ferrari but only two hundredths of a second ahead of the Dodge Viper of Marc Goossens.
Into GT Daytona and Davison – in the TRG Aston Martin – scored his second consecutive pole position but will be hoping his hastily repaired V12 Vantage, damaged after a massive shunt in the warm up at Road America, will be up to the job of taking on the GTD masses during the Oak Tree Grand Prix.
Davison said: “We went through hell and back after last weekend.
“We’ve been working non-stop, and we even missed the first practice yesterday. The team really did a great job and we finally got out halfway through yesterday’s second practice. I feel comfortable with the way it’s setup. It’s nice to win the pole, but it’s more important to have a good day tomorrow.”
In second place was Leh Keen in the Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT America who couldn’t compete with the massive chunk of time Davison had on the rest of the field and had to settle for the front row start.
Third place went to a different manufacturer again and it was Dane Cameron in the Turner Motorsport BMW Z4 that will be hoping third on the grid can get him at least third by the end of the race.
