Defending Rolex Series Watkins Glen August winners SunTrust Racing have the pole position for Saturday's two-hour race on the short course.
Ricky Taylor (Max Angelelli co-driver) clocked in at 1:06.039 to lead the field of nine Daytona Prototype runners. A second Corvette DP – that from Spirit of Daytona – locked out the front row with Antonio Garcia driving. He co-drives with Richard Westbrook.
“We have good cars here every time,” Taylor said. “I think every single year I feel like we have a winning car. At the six-hour we had a little bit of misfortune with that incident, but we've got such good cars. And the car once again in qualifying was really good. Coming off of a good Continental Tire test a couple of weeks ago kind of set us up well to come here and unload well. This is more important than we've ever had seeing is there's no dry practice. For me, as a driver, it was nice just to have that confidence about brake zones and everything and I just thank the team that gave me such a good car.”
Starworks' two Riley Ford DPs, the Indianapolis winners Sebastien Bourdais and Alex Popow in the No. 2 and the No. 8 car now with Lucas Luhr replacing Enzo Potolicchio alongside Ryan Dalziel this race, are next up. Championship leaders TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas) line up fifth. Jordan Taylor qualified seventh for his DP debut with Action Express Racing, and he'll co-drive with David Donohue in the No. 5 Corvette.
In GT, Marsh Racing took its first pole of the year with its Corvette with Boris Said. The lineup of Said and Eric Curran is back at the site of a race where last year Joey Logano had a practice crash as a guest driver, and essentially wrote off the car.
Still, the pole time this year of 1:12.674 was almost seven tenths of a second quicker than the second-placed No. 57 Stevenson Camaro, with another tenth back to the Horton Autosport Porsche in third. Said is racing in Grand-Am and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this weekend.
“Getting out of the Sprint Cup car and getting into the Corvette seemed easy because those were the first few laps I'd done in the dry,” Said said. “I love this place. It feels good to get the pole. I'd love to do it in the Cup car tomorrow but I don't think we have a prayer with our team but hopefully I can be in the top 15 in the Cup car.”
Three extra GT entries – a third Sahlen's Mazda RX-8, the AF Waltrip Ferrari 458 and Michael Baughman Racing Corvette co-driven by former Indy Lights driver James Davison – line up at the back of the 16-car GT grid.
The race goes live at 6:00 p.m. Eastern on Saturday evening.