“I think it's going to be a tough race; I don't think it's going to come down to speed at all. It's going to come down to more about who's got the most reliable car here, and about getting through traffic cleanly because it's unbelievable how tough it is to pass here. That's what it's going to come down to.”
A mere five hundredths further in arrears was Joey Hand in the #23 Alex Job Racing Ruby Tuesday Porsche Riley, with Jon Fogarty due to start alongside in the #99 GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing Pontiac Riley he shares with Alex Gurney.
Fogarty and Gurney enter the penultimate round of the 2008 Daytona Prototype championship trailing Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas by 42 points in the standings. Pruett destroyed the primary #01 TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Lexus Riley in a horrific testing accident on Thursday, shearing the back half of the car away from the cockpit.
While the former CART star was evaluated and released from a nearby hospital, the team flew to Indianapolis to prepare the back-up car – an original-style Riley that the team drove to victory in the 2008 Rolex 24 At Daytona and which had since been converted to a show car. The rebuilt Riley was expected to be back at the New Jersey circuit late on Saturday afternoon, and should be ready for Sunday's final practice session at 8am.
Nic Jonsson qualified fifth in the #76 Krohn Racing Pontiac Lola co-driven by Ricardo Zonta, whilst Marc-Antoine Camirand, David Donohue, Antonio Garcia and Mark Patterson rounded out the top ten.
In the GT class meanwhile, Bryan Sellers responded to New Jersey Motorsports Park principal RJ Valentine's desire to see his car up towards the front for the circuit's inaugural event, by pacing the session behind the wheel of the #68 TRG Porsche GT3.
Whilst Valentine usually qualifies the car, Sellers was this time entrusted with the task and duly delivered, taking the second pole of his Grand-Am career more than three years on from his first, achieved on his series debut at Homestead-Miami Speedway all the way back in March 2005
“This weekend is a little bit different,” he explained. “RJ (Valentine) is a private investor in the track, he's taking a lot of ownership in everything that's happening this weekend and he really wanted to shine in front of his home crowd and all of his business partners and sponsors and people that help out on the car's set-up in qualifying.
“RJ really wanted to have his car sit up front in qualifying. Fortunately, the crew did everything they needed to do to get me a good car for qualifying. We were fortunate enough to come through with the pole.”
Two tenths of a second adrift of the pole-sitter is the first of four Pontiacs, headed up by Andrew Davis right at the end of the session in the #57 Stevenson Motorsports Stevenson Automotive/BryanMark Financial Pontiac GXP.R.
