James Chamberlin will start on pole position for the season-opening race of the TORA TCF TASCAR season; the Daytona 300. The LMP Motorsport driver took his #514 Toyota Camry to the top of the time-sheets in Sunday’s qualifying session, producing a stellar lap-time of 45.578 seconds.
After series organisers were forced to change the format of the qualifying event in the run-up to the weekend, the emphasis on single-car lap speed was increased massively. The plan had been to run two ‘duel races’ in order to set the field, but this had to be abandoned due to technical issues. Instead, a thirty-minute qualifying session comprising of single-car runs would determine who would line-up where for next Sunday’s race.
Heading into the session, many expected the times to be close at the top end of the field, with most drivers aiming for a 45.6-second lap to get into the top places. This, however, was quickly dispelled when Chamberlin reeled off his lap-time of 45.578 seconds; the fastest lap that has ever been run at Daytona International Speedway in TORA TASCAR.
The result means that Chamberlin will start on pole position for the second-straight year at the season-opening Daytona race. He’ll be hoping that this time around he’ll be able to take his #514 LMP Motorsport Toyota Camry to victory lane.
Chamberlin was one of two drivers able to run a 45.5-second lap-time in qualifying. Monty Totten got within two-hundredths of a second of Chamberlin to put his #2 SOMF Motorsport Ford Fusion on the front-row in second place. Totten, last year’s championship runner-up, will be the highest placed privateer driver when the field gets the green flag on Saturday.
Credit: Jordan Groves / Forza Motorsport 7
Eric McCluskey converted his strong pre-season pace to take third place on the grid in his #63 Remnant Racing Ford. He’ll share the second row of the grid with reigning series champion Jordan Groves in the #1 Allied Forces Throwback Racing Chevrolet SS. Positions four through six on the grid were blanketed by just three-thousandths of a second, with Zechariah Craig and Cain Piotrowski having set nigh-on identical lap-times to Groves in positions five and six respectively.
The fourth row of the grid will belong to the #13 Allied Forces Throwback Racing Chevrolet of Ben Williams and the #500 Blackberry Alpha Toyota of John McFadden. McFadden set the exact same lap-time to that of ninth-placed Callum Hawkins in the #100 Kaido HCR Ford.
Tenth on the grid will be #532 Madden Racing Team Ford of Spenser Madden. Behind him will be Tabari Curry in the #259 Ultimate Autosport Camry, followed by Alex Porter’s #81 Warparth Motorsport Chevrolet and James Norman’s #644 Norman Racing Ford; with Porter and Norman being the second pair of drivers to have set identical lap-times in qualifying.
Alex Brown will line-up fourteenth in the #349 MidNight Racing Chevrolet just ahead of the #9 Allied Forces Cascadia Racing Toyota Camry of Travis Johannes. Taking the sixteenth and final spot in A Lobby for the Daytona 300 will be John Maltais in the #727 Kaido HCR Ford.
Fifty-eight other drivers will race in four other lobbies of sixteen drivers in next weekend’s race. However, they will not be able to finish any higher than the positions in their lobbies.
With the grid set, the drivers of the TORA TCF TASCAR series will have less than a week to wait until the eagerly anticipated season-opening Daytona 300. With the first lobby comprising of one former champion, four former race-winners and sixteen of the best stock car racers on the Forza Motorsport 7 title for Xbox One, the race on Saturday is set to be one of the most unpredictable yet.
TORA TCF TASCAR Season 7 – Daytona 300 – Qualifying top sixteen:
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