On his first qualifying run for the squad, Peter Dumbreck has impressively sealed Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Racing's ninth front row starting spot from twelve American Le Mans Series races in 2007 at Laguna Seca.
The Scot was held up early in the qualifying session at the legendary Californian circuit, but ultimately pulled a lap out of the bag when it really counted, to leave the #31 machine 20th overall and four tenths of a second adrift of the GT2 pace-setting Risi
Ferrari of Mika Salo and Jaime Melo.
I'm getting along well with the track, the former Toyota factory ace insisted afterwards. We still have work to do on the car to try and improve the balance, but for my first qualifying in a Ferrari and my first visit to Laguna Seca I'm quite happy with the front row of the grid.
I thought at the beginning I would leave a bit of a gap, but the problem was that by the time I was fully on it I was catching those other cars. Then I had to pass a couple of cars during fast laps, so maybe things could have been a little better. If I'd had three laps on my own I could have raised the time a little bit, but I'm happy with the lap.
The race is a different matter, though. We need to work on stabilising the car in the high-speed corners to improve its race pace. You have to watch for the other cars, but I feel happy with the circuit. At Atlanta I felt like I had to be watching in my mirrors so much. Here I feel a little bit more relaxed, and hopefully that will stand us in good stead for the race.
Dumbreck's driving partner behind the wheel of the Ferrari 430GT is Lucas Luhr, who also admitted to having concerns about traffic during the race in a car with considerably less power than the LMP1 Audi he raced in the Petit Le Mans two weeks ago.
