Porsche Power to Lead Daytona 24 Hour Start

Author:

rolex24nightshot

Qualifying for the 47th edition of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the first race of the 2009 Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series season, concluded Thursday January 22nd with five Daytona Prototype entries besting the magic 1:41.00 lap time. Follow the jump to see which teams were in the top 5!

The top five were Alegra Motorsports BMW Riley, Krohn Racing’s Ford Lola, Michael Shank Racing’s Ford Riley and two Porsche Riley’s of Penske Racing and Brumos Racing taking the top two positions.
The two top Qualifiers broke the previous track record for Daytona Prototypes by over two-tenths of a second per lap with David Donahue, piloting the Brumos # 58 entry, gaining the pole by just one-thousandth of a second over Penske’s Timo Bernhard.

This is the eighth career Rolex Series pole for Donahue who admitted that it only amounts to two days of bragging rights. “The truth is I’d rather be up here in the centre at this time on Sunday” he claimed in reference to his goal of winning the race. “People remember the race winners, not who won the pole.” he added.

The GT class will be lead by the Speedsource Mazda RX-8 and TRG Porsche GT3, the two were separated by less that a tenth of a second. 18 Daytona Prototypes and 29 GT Class production based cars will take the start for this year’s race. The Green flag is scheduled to drop Saturday at 3:30 EST. Television coverage is on Fox and Speed, live timing and scoring can be found online at www.grand-am.com.