Core Autosport will line up on the front of the grid at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), with Patrick Long putting in a strong performance in the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR.
Long was less than a tenth off of pole position, set by the Risi Competizionale Ferrari, and will share the Porsche during the race with Tom Kimber-Smith.
“It’s really awesome,” said Long. “These guys have worked so hard since January and I would have taken a top-five and been happy, so this is amazing. It’s still a long road, but each of these milestones continues to remind this team how good they are and we just have to keep building off of it, our engineer Gary Davies has stuck to his plans and philosophies and he’s made me a believer overnight.
We’ve worked with Porsche and Michelin since we rolled this car out, but ultimately Gary and our team manager Morgan Brady have been steering this ship. It’s really cool to see them come from a clean slate and create something. We’re still going to remain modest because these are early days and it’s going to be a long summer,“
Lining up in third, behind Long, will be the Team Falken Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, continuing the strong run of form for the team, who led at the previous round in Long Beach.
“It’s a great result,” added Bryan Sellers, driver of the Falken Porsche. “It’s funny because it’s by far the best we’ve qualified here. If you would have come into the weekend and told us we would qualify third, we’d say that’s great and take it. But you get so close to the pole, and you want that extra little bit. That competitive side of you wants you to be able to get that little bit more.
It’s the closest we’ve ever been to the leaders here by a longshot. That shows the constant improvement from the team and the Falken Tires. Now we go into morning warm up and focus on race performance and race longevity. Try and plan the best we can and see where it leads us.”
The third Porsche on the grid will be the Paul Miller Racing car of Bryce Miller and Marco Holzer, while the GT Challenge class for evenly-matched Porsche 911s will be headed by the Alex Job Racing car of Jeroen Bleekemolen.
