Jon Fogarty took a first step toward GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing's goal of changing its luck at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday, capturing the pole position for Saturday's Grand Prix of Miami.
Coming out on top of a highly competitive qualifying session, Fogarty captured his Daytona Prototype record-extending 17th career pole position with a lap of 1:13.655 (112.416mph) in the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Riley-Chevrolet co-driven by Alex Gurney. He will be joined on the front row by Memo Rojas, who is seeking his fifth consecutive Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16 victory in the No. 01 TELMEX Riley-BMW he co-drives with Scott Pruett. The top seven DPs were separated by less than one second; the top six DPs all featured different engine-chassis combinations.
"We want to put this place to rest – we want to win here, and this is a good start," Fogarty said. "Our engineers made a few good calls between our last practice and now, and I think we have a good racecar."
Rojas' second-quickest lap of 1:13.838 (112.137mph), followed by Paul Edwards in the No. 99 Spirit of Daytona Coyote-Chevy, Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 SunTrust Dallara-Chevy and Brian Frisselle in the No. 77 Office Depot Dallara-Ford.
In GT qualifying, Jan Magnussen gave both Stevenson Motorsports and the Chevrolet Camaro their first pole position in the class. The Dane ran a lap of 1:19.772 (103.796mph) in the No. 57 Camaro co-driven by Robin Liddell. Boris Said qualified second in a brand-new No. 31 Whelen Engineering Corvette with a lap of 1:20.301 (103.112mph).