TOOELE — In their debut race at Miller Motorsports Park last spring, Gil de Ferran and teammate Simon Pagenaud barely missed out on snagging the overall pole position in qualifying.
Pagenaud made sure they left nothing to chance in their return visit on Saturday.
The Frenchman set a track record to help his team capture the pole position going into today's Utah Grand Prix. Pagenaud turned in a qualifying lap time of 1:30.645 to edge David Brabham by 0.736 seconds.
Driving in a LMP1 Acura ARX-02a, Pagenaud bested Timo Bernhard's qualifying lap from last year in an LMP2 Porsche RS Spyder by 0.405 seconds and Marco Werner's LMP1 record, set in an Audi R10, by 0.945 seconds.
Luis Diaz earned the LMP2-class pole. His lap time of 1:32.749 was 0.764 seconds better than that posted by Butch Leitzinger.
Jorg Bergmeister set a class record with a lap of 1:47.210 to win pole position in the GT2 class. Carl Skerlong was the winner of the first Challenge class pole position with a lap of 1:56.166.
The Challenge class is new for the American Le Mans Series, offering an opportunity for teams and drivers from the Patron GT3 Challenge by Yokohama to step up to American Le Mans Series competition.
The green flag for the Utah Grand Prix race will drop at 2:15 pm this afternoon.
E-mail: jocoon@desnews.com