IMSA: Braun, Westbrook, Pumpelly take poles

CORE autosport's Colin Braun scored the overall pole for Saturday's Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park. The reigning PC champion pushed the No. 54 ORECA FLM09-Chevy to a best lap of 48.824 and withstood healthy shots from PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports' Robert Alon (-0.016) and Performance Tech Racing's James French (-0.106).

Brutal 99-degree ambient and 140-degree track temperatures were endured by all three classes during qualifying. Most remarkable of all, the combined margin between first and second place across PC, GT Le Mans, and GT Daytona was only 0.132 seconds.

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"For us it was just about pushing the whole time," said Braun, who earned his third PC pole of the year. "That was a little bit of a messy session, but we were just using [qualifying] as a [test] session so we have a better car for the race."

GTLM was the star of the qualifying show on Friday as the top four comprised of BMW, Corvette, Ferrari, and Ford were separated by an impossibly small margin of 0.054 seconds for most of the 15-minute session.

Richard Westbrook came out on top on his final lap in the No. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT (pictured, top). Despite recent Balance of Performance changes designed to slow the Fords, the team entered Lime rock with three consecutive wins and will start Saturday's 2h40m race from pole. His 50.748-second tour of the 1.5-mile circuit provided a razor-thin advantage over BMW Team RLL's Dirk Werner in the No. 25 BMW M6 (-0.086) and Tommy Milner in the No. 4 Corvette Racing C7.R (-0.110).

Did Westbrook believe he had a shot at pole before the session started? "Absolutely not, I really didn't," he said. "We've just been working on our car and improved it every session. We've been on a really good roll, but qualifying doesn't mean anything at Lime Rock."

The red flag came out with just under three minutes remaining in GTLM qualifying for the stopped Ford GT driven by Joey Hand. The Le Mans winner, whose car ran out of fuel, lost his two fastest laps for triggering the red flag, which dropped the No. 66 to fifth.

Spencer Pumpelly earned the first GTD pole position for Change Racing with a lap of 53.148 seconds in his No. 16 Lamborghini Huracán GT3. The sportscar veteran barely edged his friend Andrew Davis in the No. 6 Stevenson Motorsports Audi R8 LMS GT3 (-0.030) and was nominally faster than Matt Bell in the sister No. 9 Stevenson Audi (-0.074).

"Look, it's 0.030 difference between me and Andrew," Pumpelly exclaimed after climbing from the car. "We've struggled in qualifying and had good race pace, so we finally have good qualifying pace. I'm really proud to get our first pole."

Up Next: Pre-race warm-up, 9:05 a.m. ET.