Scott Pruett scored his first overall pole in two years while Jordan Taylor switched teams and secured a class pole in Grand-Am Rolex Series qualifying for the Sahlen's Six Hours at the Glen, the eighth round of the 2012 season.
Pruett, whose TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing Riley BMW has not matched the outright pace of the Corvette DPs this season, snatched the Daytona Prototype class pole late in the session to edge Spirit of Daytona's Antonio Garcia, best of the five Corvettes.
“It's great to be back,” said Pruett, who shares the DP points lead and the No. 01 machine with Memo Rojas. “It's certainly been a long time for us at TELMEX/Ganassi. It was all we had. We wrung every little ounce we could out of the car.”
Garcia starts second in the No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Racing Corvette DP he is sharing with Richard Westbrook and Oliver Gavin after a best qualifying time of 1:41.599 seconds (120.474 mph). Joao Barbosa qualified third at 1:41.667 (120.393 mph) in the No. 9 Action Express Racing Corvette DP. Barbosa's co-driver is Darren Law.
Starworks' No. 8 and Doran Racing's No. 77 - featuring ex-Champ Car rivals Sebastien Bourdais and Paul Tracy in their driver lineups this weekend, start ninth and 10th, respectively.
Driving a different car but the same make and model as last year, Taylor took the GT pole with a time of 1:50.794 (110.475 mph) in the No. 75 Stevenson Auto Group Chevrolet Camaro GT.R. Taylor – who switched to Stevenson's No. 75 entry from the No. 88 Autohaus Motorsports Camaro, which is not competing this weekend – will co-drive with Matt Bell and Ronnie Bremer.
Frank Stippler gave the new Audi R8 Grand-Am its best qualifying run to date with a second-best GT time of 1:51.018 (110.252 mph) in the No. 52 APR Tuned/Audi Sport Customer Racing Audi R8 GRAND-AM. Stippler's co-drivers are Dion von Moltke and Marc Basseng. Qualifying third was GT points co-leader Emil Assentato at 1:51.158 (110.114 mph) in the No. 69 FXDD Ferrari 458 Italia he is sharing with Jeff Segal and Anthony Lazzaro. The No. 70 SpeedSource Mazda and No. 57 Stevenson Camaro complete the top five in class.