A Taylor Beats Pruett Again in Qualifying at Monterey

For the second consecutive qualifying session, the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP and No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford battled for the Prototype and overall pole position in California.

And for the second consecutive session, a Taylor brother emerged ahead of Scott Pruett in a tooth-and-nail battle to secure the pole.

Jordan Taylor emerged fastest Saturday for his first pole of the season, and somewhat surprisingly, his first pole in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

He’ll lead the field to the green in Sunday’s Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix Powered by Mazda.

Taylor set a best lap of 1:18.718 around the 2.238-mile Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, while Pruett was slightly more than two tenths in arrears at 1:18.940.

Taylor will start the car and hand it over to brother Ricky on Sunday, as the pair look for their second straight win. Meanwhile Pruett and fellow Northern California native, and co-driver, Joey Hand will roll off second in search of their first win together as teammates.

The No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP qualified third in the hands of Michael Valiante, who will share the car with Richard Westbrook.

John Pew put in his best laps of the weekend in qualifying in the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS P2 Honda, ultimately ending fourth at 1:19.651. He’ll turn over the practice pace-setting car to Ozz Negri.

The No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP (Christian Fittipaldi, Joao Barbosa) will start fifth.

Despite having two incidents in the 15-minute session, Chris Cumming secured the Prototype Challenge pole in the No. 11 RSR Racing Oreca FLM09, in the first session where the Silver or Bronze-rated drivers were tasked with qualifying.

Early in the session, Cumming spun at Turn 2 and recovered after going through the dirt offline. Later, he contacted Mikhail Goikhberg in the No. 85 JDC/Miller Motorsports car heading into Turn 2.

Nevertheless, Cumming edged Mike Guasch, in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports car, by just 0.004 for the fastest lap of the session. He set a 1:22.565 to Guasch’s 1:22.569 for the pole position.

The pole is Cumming’s second in the TUDOR Championship, having also scored the pole at Kansas Speedway last year. It also ends BAR1 Motorsports’ two-for-two run to start the year of poles.

James French, Jon Bennett and Mirco Schultis completed the top five in class.

RESULTS: Qualifying