By alley - May 30, 2014, 6:28 PM ET

IMSA: Westbrook, Corvette DP claim Detroit pole

The Englishman, however, had yet to complete his final lap and promptly took pole back from the Scot by a mere 0.018 second, recording a 1:25.011 to Dalziel's 1:25.029. The extra effort gave SDR its first pole of the season. Action Express Racing's Christian Fittipaldi completed the top-3 with his No. 5 Corvette DP.

"There was so much chatter on the radio – you're P1, no you're P2 – then I did a 1:25.1 and thought that was it, I did a cool-down lap, then they came over the radio and said I needed to do a 1:25.0," said Westbrook. "I just threw all caution to the wind and sometimes you get rewarded for that on a street circuit and sometime it can bite you.

Today just felt like our day. It's nice to see all the boys smiling at SDR."

Drama was also found in the late moments of time trials in the GT Daytona category. Flying Lizard Motorsports' Spencer Pumpelly, who led the second practice session, used a stellar lap of 1:32.914 in his No. 45 Audi R8 to displace Jeroen Bleekemolen's No. 33 Riley Technologies SRT Viper GT3-R (1:33.192) from pole. Kevin Estre, on a charge in the No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche 911 GT America, claimed third (1:33.246).

"These tires, as we've learned in qualifying, they do take couple of laps to get very good; they're a very durable tire," said Pumpelly, who used those toasty Continentals to earn his second consecutive GTD pole. "The more laps we do the faster we go. The effort was there every lap that we did. It was a good [pole] lap – all the little details you want to get right."

After tomorrow's 100-minute race, numerous drivers will leave the track with haste and catch flights to Le Mans in order to make Sunday's mandatory official test day for the 24-hour race. Westbrook, a member of the factory Corvette Racing GTE-Pro effort is one of them.

"It's not that straightforward," he said after admitting he missed his flight from Detroit to make the test day last year. "Thank got the race isn't starting that late. We'll fly straight to Paris and take a train to Le Mans and just make the afternoon session."