tyres. That was it. I definitely think we had a little bit more, but it's tough when the two yellow [RuSPORT] cars are fast every single weekend."
Allmendinger's RuSPORT team-mate Aaron Justus starts third, holding on to the spot he took in first qualifying and collecting his sixth straight top five starting position. The series rookie heads into the race in search of his first career victory in Toyota Atlantic, having finished third in each of his past two starts.
"We changed our set-up drastically to try to find something special," Justus reported, "We had a set-up that would have argued for a podium, but I don't think it would have produced any wins, so we had no idea what to expect from the car. When it started to rain, it just complicated our problems.
"It actually started our drier than I thought. They said it was pretty wet on the straightaway and the first corner. When we went out there, it was slippery, but it wasn't that bad. Quickly, the equipment came in and we were running lap times that were faster than yesterday pretty quickly."
Defending Argent Mortgage Challenge champion, and reigning CART Toyota Atlantic title holder, Jon Fogarty will start fourth in his first race since winning at Denver last year, improving on his overnight sixth spot after turning in a best lap of 1min 07.649secs. What will be of interest to the trio ahead of Fogarty, however, is that the Team Rahal pilot also started fourth in last year's inaugural event before going on to take his second victory of the season.
Fogarty's improvement means that Dalziel will start only fifth on the grid, snapping a streak of nine consecutive races in which he has qualified inside the top four. The second-year pilot has finished second in each of his past three starts and will be hoping for a strong performance - and a little bit of help - if he is to remain in the race for the series championship beyond the Argent Mortgage Challenge.
Local driver Alex Figge put his car sixth on the grid, enjoying his best starting position since he qualified on the outside of the third row for round five at Portland International Raceway. Fogarty's Team Rahal team-mate Danica Patrick slipped back to seventh after taking fifth spot overnight, and will share row four with Dorricott's Luis Diaz.
Kyle Krisiloff starts ninth while Jonathan Macri fills out the top-ten, just missing the one-second bracket that covered the top nine drivers.
Leading qualifiers - Denver:
1.
AJ Allmendinger 1min 06.966secs
2.
Michael Valiante 1min 07.268secs
3.
Aaron Justus 1min 07.541secs
4.
Jon Fogarty 1min 07.649secs
5.
Ryan Dalziel 1min 07.692secs
6.
Alex Figge 1min 07.743secs
7.
Danica Patrick 1min 07.818secs
8.
Luis Diaz 1min 07.827secs
9.
Kyle Krisiloff 1min 07.914secs
10.
Jonathan Macri 1min 07.968secs
11.
Joey Hand 1min 08.406secs
12.
Marc Breuers 1min 09.005secs
13.
Alex Garcia 1min 09.408secs
14.
Eric Jensen 1min 10.214secs
