Jade Buford will lead the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge field to the green flag for the start of BMW Performance 200 at Daytona International Speedway to begin the 2013 season.
With a best time of 1:56.512 Buford – for Multimatic Motorsports – was three tenths faster than Jack Roush Jr., who continued the strong run for the #61 Roush Performance Mustang he shares with Billy Johnson. Their teammates in the #51 were third fastest ahead of two of the three Fall–Line Motorsports BMW M3 Coupe, the full threesome only kept apart by the Rum Bum Racing Porsche in sixth place.
Matt Bell and John Edwards’ Stevenson Motorsports Camaro were eighth fastest, the Turner Motorsports BMW of Bill Auberlen and Paul Dalla Lana – the team which had the best time of the weekend going into the session – was ninth faster, with Multimatic’s #16 completing the top ten.
The third Aston Martin Vantage in the Multimatic Motorsports stable, that of reigning series champions David Empringham and John Farano was only 12th fastest having started the race week by leading the opening practice session.
Lawrence Davey was tasked with qualifying Mitchum Motorsports’ Camaro GS.R, the Sunoco Grand-Am 200 Challenge winner qualifying 23rd in the Grand Sport class.
Ryan Ellis was a somewhat surprising pole man in the Street Tuner class for i-MOTO in the #30 Mazda Speed 3. Ellis added the top time in class to his 2011 pole position, a year in which he also won the race.
Ellis’ lap of 2:06.109 was five hundredths better than BimmerWorld Racing’s Tyler Cooke. Ryan Eversley and Michael Valiante, who between them led the ST class in the three practice sessions will only start seventh and eighth for the race.
Andrew Jordan and James Colborn, in on the Compass360 Racing team cars to Eversley’s #75 will start only 19th in class.
