Brundle Secures Ligier-Honda TUSC Debut Pole at COTA

Alex Brundle pushed the No. 42 OAK Racing Ligier JS P2 Honda to a debut pole position for the new car on North American soil ahead of Saturday’s Lone Star Le Mans, Round 10 of the 2014 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season.

Brundle has achieved his second (Watkins Glen) and OAK Racing’s third pole this season, courtesy of the fastest TUDOR Championship lap of the weekend thus far at Circuit of the Americas. He’ll share the car with Gustavo Yacaman.

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The Englishman’s best time of 1:57.809 at the 3.4-mile track beat three other Daytona Prototype-spec cars, and the next best P2-spec car that ended fifth.

Ricky Taylor slotted the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP into second (1:58.643) with Memo Rojas third in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford and Christian Fittipaldi fourth in the No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP.

Johannes van Overbeek, in the lone Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b in the TUDOR Championship this weekend, lines up fifth.

Sean Rayhall took his second straight pole position in Prototype Challenge, driving the No. 25 8Star Motorsports Oreca FLM09, with a time that will slot him eighth on the overall grid.

Rayhall’s best time of 2:00.528 was a solid 0.557 clear of the rest of the runners in the truncated session. He’ll race Saturday with Luis Diaz.

Colin Braun (CORE autosport) and Bruno Junqueira (RSR Racing) were next, with the two Starworks Motorsport entries fourth and fifth.

Jack Hawksworth didn’t get to complete a lap in the No. 08 RSR Racing as he pulled off course, and neither did David Ostella in the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports entry following an accident at the exit of Turn 20.

Ostella’s contact brought out a red flag that truncated the session to just eight minutes of green flag running instead of the standard 15.

RESULTS: Qualifying