TeamTGM’s Owen Trinkler clocked in a lap at 103.156 mph Thursday (March 14) to claim the overall pole for Friday’s Alan Jay Automotive Network 120, the second race of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season. The lap is a Grand Sport qualifying lap record for Sebring, but not the fastest lap of the weekend.
Trinkler’s lap was half a tenth of a second faster than Compass Racing’s Kuno Wittmer, co-driver of the winning McLaren at Daytona. CarBahn Motorsports’ Tyler McQuarrie will start third in his Audi, followed by Turner Motorsport’s Robby Foley in a BMW M4 GT4. Tyler Cooke was fifth in another Audi for eEuroparts.com ROWE Racing.
KohR Motorsports’ Nate Stacy will start sixth in the fastest of the Ford Mustang GT4s, then BimmerWorld Racing’s James Clay. Motorsport in Action’s Corey Fergus was eighth in his McLaren, while James Cox was ninth in the Wynn’s Mercedes. Part-time Gander Outdoors Truck Series racer Myatt Snider will start 10th. He’s rather excited to be racing at Sebring this weekend, as seen in this response to the entry list for the race being shared on Twitter.
— ????? ?????? (@MyattSnider) March 13, 2019
Matt Crafton qualified the second Multimatic Motorsports Mustang in 13th. Despite the four ThorSport Racing drivers not being all that experienced on road courses (and all but not at all at Sebring), there will be a strong intra-team rivalry come race time.
The Grand Sport qualifying session was shortened due to a crash for BGB Motorsports’ Thomas Collingwood. Collingwood lost control of his Porsche in Sunset Bend (Turn 17) and impacted the tires, bringing out the red. Winward Racing/HTP Motorsports’ No. 33 Mercedes did not participate in the session due to an earlier practice crash for Russell Ward.
In TCR, Britt Casey Jr. executed a beat down on the rest of the class in his Audi RS3 LMS Club Sport. Debuting JDC-Miller MotorSports’ new part-time second car, Casey won the pole with ease, setting the fastest time of all TCR drivers in all three sectors. His lap of 100.665 mph was two-thirds of a second faster than anyone had run in three previous practice sessions in TCR and easily a track record for the class.
Casey’s lap was good enough for 15th overall, beating half of the Grand Sport cars entered. It was more than 1.2 seconds faster than Atlanta Speedwerks’ Brian Henderson in second. Mark Wilkins will start third in class in his Hyundai, followed by LA Honda World Racing’s Shelby Blackstock in a Honda Civic Type-R TCR. Michael Johnson will start fifth in the second JDC-Miller MotorSports Audi.
IMSA MICHELIN PILOT CHALLENGE ALAN JAY AUTOMOTIVE NETWORK 120 QUALIFYING RESULTS
The Alan Jay Automotive Network 120 is scheduled to go green Friday afternoon at 12:05 p.m. EDT. The race will be streamed live at IMSA.com and FansChoice.tv.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
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