American Le Mans Series

Dirk Müller and Leh Keen secure GT poles

Dirk Müller (GT2) and Leh Keen (GTC) secured the pole positions for tomorrow’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. The BMW and Porsche drivers beat their rivals in the GT qualifying session.

In the GT qualifying session the first minutes saw the GTC cars out on track, before being joined by the quicker GT2 cars. Tracy Krohn spun his Ferrari F430 GT2 on its outlap, but quickly recovered and continued.

Dirk Müller posted a 2:00.782 in his second lap, with Jaime Melo checking in right behind him. Soon after Melo had posted his time though it was Wolf Henzler in the #17 Team Falken Tire Porsche who went just a tad quicker. Both cars were still over four tenths behind the leading BMW.

Twelve minutes were left in the session when the two Corvettes went out for their qualifying run, with Jörg Bergmeister on a flying lap as well. On the Ulmann Straight Bergmeister tried to pass Shane Lewis in the Velox Motorsport Porsche Cup but was unable to and the two nearly collided in the last corner.

Bergmeister did not improve the time set by Müller and with only a few minutes remaining the #90 was still on provisional pole position. The Falken Tire Porsche was still third, ahead of the Risi Ferrari and the two Corvettes.

As the checkered flag was shown it meant that Müller had secured the pole position for BMW, the first BMW pole position in GT since 1998 (and the first for BMW since 1999) and broke the GT2 qualifying record. Marc Goossens qualified the Jaguar XKR in eleventh place, although there were some worried faces around the track as the car drove around the track in its final lap with steam coming from the car. According to team owner/driver Paul Gentilozzi there was nothing to worry about though.

Leh Keen in the #80 Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup eventually posted the fastest GTC qualifying lap time, ahead of his team mate Patrick Kelly in the #81 AJR Porsche. Kelly was over a second behind his team mate though and managed to beat the Tracy Krohn driven Risi Ferrari F430 GT2. Romeo Kapudija in the team’s #23 completed a qualifying clean sweep for AJR.

Post qualifying quotes:

Leh Keen: “My lap was pretty uneventful, pretty clean. Kind of a one lap or two lap wonder. Squeezed everything out of the tyres. As for tomorrow, it’s a twelve hour race, so we have to be there at the end. ”

Dirk Müller: “Obviously I am extremely pleased. It is a kind of not really expected pole, to be 100% honest. There were lots of things going on during the week. Both me and my team mate Joey were not happy with the car on Thursday and we made some big changes and we are now extremely happy.”