McAleer Scores First Career IMSA Pole

Stevan McAleer became the fourth different pole winner in four IMSA Prototype Challenge races Friday in qualifying for Saturday’s three-hour endurance race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

It took a perfect final lap in the 15-minute session for McAleer to steal the top spot from Garett Grist. Making adjustments throughout the session, McAleer set the pole lap of 1:12.957 in the No. 10 Robillard Racing Norma M30 he co-drives with team owner Joe Robillard.

It was the first pole of McAleer’s IMSA career.

“I’m super excited, this is the first race of the season that Joe and I have been teammates,” said McAleer. “I knew we were going to be close. My biggest problem was I could not get the car out of [Turn] 5. I don’t think it was setup related, I think it was brain related and I should’ve tried to slow down a little more.

“It was very hard to get the car accurately out of the corner and to be honest, on that last lap there I just kind of paced myself and made sure my only focus was to get out of 5. Coming up the back straight and turning into 8, I got a fuel pressure warning and the car started to run out of fuel so that was it, that was the only lap we could get. I don’t think it cost us anything.”

Grist held on to qualify second No. 51 K2R Motorsports Ligier JS P3 he co-drives Rob Hodes, while the No. 47 Forty7 Motorsports of Rodrigo Pflucker, co-driven by Austin McCusker, qualified third.

The race gets underway Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET, live on IMSA.tv with IMSA Radio commentary.

RESULTS: Qualifying