Team owner Rob Dyson has called for the rules in the American Le Mans Series to be changed after seeing his team lose out on the LMP2 class pole for the season opening Sebring 12 Hours.

The team sat first and second in class when the prototype qualifying session was red-flagged following an accident involving Ben Devlin and not restarted, with series officials then ruling that the eight minutes of running that had taken place wasn't enough for the session to be classed as official.

As a result, the #16 car of Chris Dyson and Guy Smith that had looked set to start from the class pole will now start sixth, while the #20 entry of Butch Leitzinger, Marino Franchitti and Andy Lally will be sixth after practice times were used to determine the grid, something team owner Dyson wasn't too pleased with.

"It is too bad, because we do not run practice sessions as qualifying sessions," he said. "Plus they not only penalised the top two classes in qualifying, P1 and P2, but they also penalised all the GT guys. I think that it is a hollow accomplishment for those who benefited from it. Those that did not and got hurt from it are feeling the way that we do.

"Rules are rules and the practice session was two minutes shorter than it should have been. When they red flagged it, they kept the clock going and they could not restart it. That is the way the rule is written. The rule has to be changed. The rule should be that when there is a red flag in qualifying, the clock has to be stopped and every reasonable effort made to restart the session.

"It's the show that the fans come to see and we must not forget that."