David Brabham took the #9 Patron Highcroft Acura ARX-01b to third spot on the starting grid for the now annual American Le Mans Series event on the iconic streets of Long Beach, setting the team up for another overall podium to go with the third place it achieved in St Petersburg.
Although Saturday's race is shorter than the average ALMS event, at one hour and 40 minutes, the green-and-black Highcroft car is well placed to take the fight to the pace-setting Penske Porsche and Fernandez Acura ahead of it.
Brabham, however, will probably feel that he could have done better than the inside of row two, having been challenging at the head of the pack throughout. Running flat-out, however, he slid into the tyre barrier at turn nine, denting his hopes of a better result.
"The Acura was very fast - the great thing we saw today is that the #9 can really hustle out there," the Australian reported, "The car was very forgiving and had great grip. We're light years from where we were yesterday, when we were struggling in a lot of areas.
"I've got to say that the team really did a fantastic job at getting us back up to the front of the pack today. The real shame of it is that I could see I was four-tenths of a second up when I hit the wall and we were only off pole by a tenth of second so, if I had completed that lap, who knows?
"But that's racing. I just pushed and ran out of luck there at the end."
Co-driver Scott Sharp, who drove the ARX-01b in morning practice, agreed that the entire squad had produced the goods for qualifying.
"It was a great job by the entire Patrón Highcroft Racing team," the IndyCar convert insisted, "We had a few new things to try this week and more to learn about our Acura chassis. After the first day, the engineers did a great job to make some strong improvements to our car and catch us up with the leaders, and David did a great job in qualifying to put us in the third spot. I'm really excited for the race tomorrow."
