Cook Claims VIR Race 2 Pole for Dark Horse Racing

Jeff Cook will start the second race of the McLaren Trophy America weekend on the overall pole position at Virginia International Raceway, with Am class competitors setting the two fastest laps in Sunday’s qualifying session.

Cook took his Am class No. 5 Dark Horse Racing McLaren Artura Trophy Evo he shares with Papaya Cup competitor Deniz Teoman to the top of the times on his third attempt, laying down his pole-securing 1:48.507-second benchmark on his third lap around the 3.27-mile road course.

Just behind, fellow Am competitor Kevin Madsen set the second-quickest time, with the No. 53 RP Motorsports by Forte Racing Artura he shares with the Papaya Cup-eligible Neil Langberg just 0.012 second down on the Dark Horse driver’s pace.

James Li took the Pro class pole with the third overall-fastest time in the 15-minute session aboard the No. 74 RWE Motorsport ‘Lightning McLaren’ he co-drives with Casey Dennis.

GMG Racing’s James Sofronas was fourth-quickest overall ahead of Colin Harrison’s No. 21 TechSport machine in fifth.

Cooper Broll was second in Pro in his and Tommy Pintos’ No. 919 Skip Barber Racing McLaren with the sixth-best time of the session, just ahead of Pro-Am class pole-sitter and Race 1 winner John Dempsey in the No. 10 RWE car shared with Andrew Davis.

Bob Stockard was the only driver in the field to have not met the maximum qualifying threshold time and will start Race 2 from the back of the grid as a result.

The quarter-hour session ran entirely green with no major incidents of note.

Race 2 is scheduled to take the green flag at 10:15 a.m. EST with live coverage available on SRO’s GT World and McLaren Automotive’s YouTube channels.

RESULTS: Qualifying 2