Hindman, Skeer Take CTSC Mazda Raceway Poles

Trent Hindman (GS) and Elliott Skeer (ST) scored the poles for the Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix Powered by Mazda, Round 3 of the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season.

For Hindman, it’s his second straight and third overall pole position in the No. 46 Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3, which he shares with John Edwards. Hindman set a flier of 1:35.948 to secure the top spot.

“I was unsure about qualifying going in; I saw a good time pop up on the dash, and that was the fastest I’d gone all weekend,” Hindman said. “At the end of the day, those guys gave me a great car. John did a lot of work earlier in the weekend to set it up right. This was an example of how good of an organization Fall-Line is. The team lifted me up; they kept my spirits up.”

The team has a pair of second-place finishes in 2014 and seeks to break through this weekend.

Eric Curran qualified the No. 01 CKS Autosport Chevrolet Camaro Z/28.R second at 1:35.979; he’ll share that car with Lawson Aschenbach.

Charles Espenlaub took the No. 99 Automatic Racing Aston Martin Vantage to third at 1:36.040, with Andrew Davis fourth in the No. 6 Stevenson Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro Z/28.R and Max Riddle fifth in the No. 07 TRG-AMR Aston Martin Vantage.

In ST, Skeer, deputizing for the injured Marc Miller in CJ Wilson Racing’s No. 3 Mazda MX-5, captured a CTSC debut pole position at 1:39.260 to lead the Mazda 1-4 sweep.

“I’ve been here a bit, so I’m used to this place,” Skeer said. “It’s similar to an MX-5 Cup car. But this has a little more power, brake, steering and lateral grip. It took a couple laps to get comfortable, but I had a great baseline.”

His CJ Wilson Racing teammate Chad McCumbee was second in the sister No. 5 Mazda MX-5. Skeer will co-drive with Tyler McQuarrie, McCumbee with Stevan McAleer in Saturday’s race.

Two of the three Freedom Autosport MX-5s entered locked out the second row. Randy Pobst qualified third at 1:39.647 in the No. 26; Mark Pombo took the sister No. 25 to fourth on the grid.

Adam Isman, in the No. 04 Autometrics Motorsports Porsche Boxster, was best of the rest in fifth, at 1:40.469, 1.209 off Skeer’s polesitting time.

The two-hour, 30-minute third round of the season goes green at 12:45 p.m. PT. The race will be live streamed on IMSA.com.

RESULTS: Qualifying