Bell on Race 1 Pole in VIR for Copeland

Jaxon Bell will start on pole position in Race 1 of the Toyota GR Cup North America weekend at Virginia International Raceway for Copeland Motorsports.

The title contender laid down a 2:06.187 benchmark lap of his fifth of six total laps aboard his No. 7 Copeland Toyota GR86 Cup car during the 15-minute qualifying session to outpace RVA Graphics Motorsports by Speed Syndicate’s Spike Kohlbecker by 0.233 seconds.

Max Schweid will roll off from the second row of the grid after recording the session’s third-fastest time in his No. 98 TechSport Toyota, just 0.255 seconds off of Bell’s pole-sitting time.

Close behind was Practice 2 pace-setter Ethan Goulart, with points-leader Westin Workman rounding out the overall top five for BSI Racing.

An impressive qualifying effort from Isabella Robusto saw the ARCA Menards Series driver qualify 15th overall, despite not turning any practice laps on Friday.

Five minutes into the session, an incident involving TechSport teammates Brett Kowalski and Goulart came under review from race control, with a decision to be made post-session.

While battling over track position, the pair went side-by-side with Kolaksi ending up in the grass and eventually spinning his No. 15 GR86 Cup car while returning to the track, resulting in multiple competitors taking to the runoff in avoidance.

John Dean’s No. 16 Copeland entry did not participate in the session.

Race 1 of the weekend takes the start at 2:05 p.m. EST with live coverage available on SRO’s GT World YouTube and Twitch channels as well as grcup.com.

RESULTS: Qualifying 1