Joey Hand gave Ford Chip Ganassi Racing its third pole position of the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship at Virginia International Raceway.
The American's time of 1:40.211s, set near the end of the 15-minute session, was enough to top the order by 0.204 seconds over the BMW M6 driven by Alexander Sims.
The result marked Hand's second pole of the season – his first coming at the season-opening Daytona 24 Hours – and the third for the #66 Ford GT shared with Dirk Mueller.
"The second-to-last lap was a good one, but I knew I left some out there," said Hand.
"I knew there was a little more in it, so I pushed it and got the best lap I could get."
"We’ve made a few small changes [since Road America], but we had a really nice, comfy car to drive right off of the truck. We’ve been loving it all weekend."
Row two of the GTLM class grid will be occupied by the second BMW, qualified by John Edwards, and the Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 of Giancarlo Fisichella.
The Houston-based Risi squad is making its return to sportscar competition this weekend, having not raced since the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
Corvette C7.Rs locked out the third row, with Tommy Milner nudging out championship leader Jan Magnussen.
Ford's sister car will start seventh, ahead of the two Porsche 911 RSRs which struggled for pace during qualifying.
In GT Daytona, Jeroen Mul continued the recent form of the Change Racing Lamborghini squad to claim his second consecutive pole of the season.
Having clinched his maiden IMSA pole at Road America, the Dutch driver led all free practice sessions before clocking a time of 1:43.391s to top the GT3-based category.
Two tenths behind Mul was Jesse Krohn in the Turner Motorsport BMW M6, ahead of Andrew Davis in the Audi R8 entered by Stevenson Motorsports.
Jeroen Bleekemolen qualified the title-chasing Mercedes AMG-GT3 fourth, while the pair of Lexus RCF GT3s claimed the next two positions.
Championship leader Christina Nielsen, who shares the Scuderia Corsa Ferrari with Alessandro Balzan, will start the race from 10th on the 16-car class grid.
The pair have a 15-point advantage over Bleekemolen in the standings with three events remaining.
Round 10 of the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship is set to get underway at 13:35 EDT.






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