The two green cars in the race, the Drayson Lola, leading the pack here, and the Patron Honda, in third place, will battle for the ALMS title in Utah.
TOOLE, Ut — Hot is the word of the day at Larry H. Miller Dealerships Utah Grand Prix both in terms of temperature and the racing that take place Sunday.
With qualifying taking place in temperatures that were in excess of 90 degrees, the competition was equally hot. In LMP class it was a classic battle between the defending champion Patron Tequila sponsored Honda Acura ARX 01c driven by Frenchman Simon Pagenaud and the Lola Judd of Team Drayson with Englishman Jonny Cocker doing the driving the honors.
The Frenchman was able to grab the pole from the Englishman by just over half a second leaving the Drayson team with its best ALMS qualifying effort on the outside of the front row. But only a blink of the eye behind Cocker is the Mazda Lola — .013 seconds to be exact and in fourth position is the Porsche Sypder Muscle Milk car just .039 seconds behind the Mazda. That means the top four LMP cars are within just under six tenths of a second.
Team Drayson is without services of Team Owner Paul Drayson this weekend, as he is recovering from an off-track foot injury. In his stead is Emanuele Pirro, who set the fast time of the practice session for the class. The Drayson team is riding a high after finishing the 24 Hours of Le Mans a month ago in France. The coupling of youngster Cocker and veteran Pirro will be interesting watch with Cocker taking the first stint and Pirro bringing the Green Machine home.
Nevertheless, the Drayson team will be charting new territory just to finish at the Utah event, something that they have not been able to do all season — and if they do finish watch up. Pirro has shown that he still has the talent to get the car around the course the fastest line — so it is possible that there could be another first for the team this weekend.
But if you really want to understand the competitiveness of the ALMS circuit take a peak at the GT class where the top three cars were Ferrari 430 GTs and the top six cars were only .303 second apart. Surprising the Corvette Team which has seen its share of bad luck over this season qualified seventh and eight in the GT class — but in the hunt less than .4 tenths of a second off the pace set by the Ferraris.
Full qualifying results can be found here.
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