Tommy Milner has beaten out team-mate Jordan Taylor in qualifying for the Michelin GT Challenge at VIR, scoring his maiden Corvette pole position in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship.
Milner took pole position in the #4 Corvette C8.R with a time of 01:40:263, beating out Taylor’s #3 sister car by just 0.003s.
For the Washington DC native, it is his first pole position in IMSA racing with Corvette, having contested every season of the championship’s current iteration since 2014.
Cooper MacNeil took third overall in the #79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19, 1.182s off pole.
Foley on pole in GTD, disaster for championship leaders Pfaff
Robby Foley has put Turner Motorsports in the best possible position to salvage the team’s damaged GTD title hopes after its bad outing last time out in Long Beach.
Foley topped Friday’s qualifying session in the #96 BMW M6 GT3 with a time of 01:43:809, 0.236s faster than the #1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.
Trent Hindman took third in the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, with Roman de Angelis fourth in the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3.
Richard Heistand was fifth for CarBahn with Peregrine Racing, ahead of Vasser Sullivan’s Aaron Telitz.
GTD championship leaders Pfaff Motorsports have meanwhile suffered a major blow to their championship hopes and will start the race from the very back of the grid.
Zacharie Robichon qualified initially seventh after spinning off the circuit at the Roller Coaster, but was able to keep going although there was grass stuck on the car’s intake.
The grass was later no longer visible. IMSA had given the team permission to clean the grass away, but the team also carried out inspections for further damage. For this it did not have permission.
Under IMSA regulations, a driver has all of his times deleted if the team touches the car without permission during qualifying.
Furthermore, since Robichon did not set a time in the session for qualifying positions, it meant that team-mate Laurens Vanthoor was not allowed to set a time during the session for qualifying points, meaning the team will both start the race last and not score any points from the qualifying session.
The top spot in GTD points qualifying was set by the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Ross Gunn, who led team-mate Alex Riberas in a one-two for the Seattle-based squad.
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