Australian driver David Brabham clinched his third overall American Le Mans series pole position of the season in what was his last qualifying session in the LMP2 Patrón Highcroft Racing Acura at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. 

Brabham set a blistering fastest time of 1:10.103, taking pole position by 0.099 seconds and setting a new Laguna Seca ALMS lap record in the process.

“It was both mine and the team’s goal to get pole position here today,” said Brabham. “It’s great to come back and take pole after the problems of the last round. The team is really strong but it’s still great for morale and I’m really pleased for all the guys. We had to really work to get the car to where we wanted it for qualifying and we have made a couple of set up changes that we will try out in warm up tomorrow morning. We’ve got a strong race car but anyone starting in the top six has a chance of winning, so it’s going to be a great battle. With Patrón Highcroft moving to LMP1 with Acura for next year, it’s fantastic to clinch the last overall pole position of the season. To follow that up with an overall win tomorrow would certainly top off the year.”

The Lowe’s Fernandez Racing Acura of Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz will line up alongside Brabham and Scott Sharp for tomorrow’s race completing an all-Acura front row at Laguna Seca, while four Acuras occupy the top five grid slots. 

Third on the grid will be the first of the Porsches with the Penske team of Timo Bernhard andRumain Dumas just ahead of the Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud Acura.

It was a tough qualifying for the LMP 1 cars with Audi’s Emanuele Pirro in his last race for the Audi ALMS team out pacing team mates Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner to claim 9th and 10th places respectively.

Jan Magnussen took his second GT1 pole position in three events in the  Corvette setting a new class

Another dominant performance by Corvette in GT1

 record with a lap of 1:19.291 in the Corvette C6.R that he again will share with Johnny O’Connell. Magnussen’s lap was 0.499 seconds better than teammate Oliver Gavin in the sister Corvette.

Dirk Werner took his second GT2 pole of the season for Farnbacher Loles Racing  Porsche. The young German set a class record with a lap of 1:22.060 in the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR that he will drive with Bryce Miller. The pairing teamed with Richard Westbrook to win at Road America in August, a four-hour race just like Saturday’s.

Werner was 0.32 seconds clear of Flying Lizard Motorsports’ Jörg Bergmeister in another Porsche. Bergmeister and teammate Wolf Henzler also wrapped up the class title at Road Atlanta as Flying Lizard did the same in the team category.

34 cars will face the starter as the field rolls around to the start at 2:45 p.m. US Pacific Time on Saturday, October 18. NBC Sports will air the race from 2 to 4 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 19. XM Satellite Radio’s Channel 144 will air the race from 4 to 8 p.m. ET on the same day. American Le Mans Radio will have live coverage on americanlemans.com, which also will feature Live Timing & Scoring.

For users of the Apple Macintosh try http://raceradio.octopusmt.com which seems to work better than the normal link.