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Luca Mars Wins Daytona Pilot Challenge Pole

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Rennsport One’s Luca Mars won the pole Thursday (Jan. 23) for Friday afternoon’s IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge BMW M Endurance Challenge. His lap at 114.309 mph is a new Grand Sport class record at Daytona, beating the previous mark set in 2023 by Ben Rhodes by nearly a half-second.

“It’s been awesome,” Mars told Frontstretch after the session. “Ever since I hopped in [the car], I’ve had a good time with it. Jan [Heylen] and the guys at [Rennsport One] have been teaching me all I need to know [about the car] and getting me ready for the race.”

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Mars’ lap was .601 seconds faster than Czabok-Simpson Motorsports’ Morgan Burkhard, who is moving up this year from the TCR class. McCumbee-McAleer Racing’s Sam Paley will start third in his Ford Mustang GT4, then KohR Motorsports’ Jim Michaelian. KohR Motorsports owner/driver Dean Martin qualified fifth.

At Daytona, it takes a little while to do an out lap, then a lap at speed. The better part of one-third of a 15-minute qualifying session. As a result, it took a bit for comprehensive times to be set.

When that happened, Morgan Burkhard was fastest in his Porsche for Czabok-Simpson Motorsports. However, Luca Mars, driving the Porsche that teammate Jan Heylen was fastest with in morning practice, put himself on provisional pole shortly afterwards.

A lap later, Mars turned in the eventual pole lap. He was never threaten en route to pole.

In TCR, Montreal Motorsport Group had had one of the fastest cars during the ROAR Before the 24 last week. Qualifying was similar at first.

It took a little while for everyone to get going, but Louis-Philippe Montour was able to set a lap at 108.488 mph to put himself on the provisional pole. At the time, the lap was more than six-tenths of a second faster than anyone else.

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However, that did not stand. Bryan Herta Autosport’s Bryson Morris set a class record with six minutes to go when he turned in a lap at 110.049 mph with the fastest time of everyone in all three sectors. That put him well in front of everyone else and three-tenths of a second below the previous record set by his teammate, Harry Gottsacker.

Gottsacker wasn’t exactly taking that sitting down. He was able to get himself up to second and beat some of Morris’ best sector times. While Gottsacker was able to improve his time, he could not prevent Morris from claiming the class pole.

Morris’ lap was .278 seconds faster than Gottsacker, who also broke his previous class record. Montour will start third, then Precision Racing LA’s Celso Neto. KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering’s Dr. William Tally will start fifth in his Honda.

IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge BMW M Endurance Challenge Qualifying Results

The BMW M Endurance Challenge is scheduled to go green at 1:45 p.m. ET Friday afternoon. The race will stream live on Peacock starting at 1:40 p.m. ET. We’ll have a full recap of the action here at Frontstretch.

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.

Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.