Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park

Date: April 5, 2013
Event: Porsche 250 (Round 3 of 12)
Series: Daytona Prototype division of the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series
Location: Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala. (2.3-mile, 17-turn road course)
Pole Winner: Jon Fogarty of Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing (1:18.949 at 104.878 mph)
Wayne Taylor Racing: 3rd by Jordan Taylor (1:19.195 at 104.552 mph)

The No. 10 Velocity Worldwide Corvette Dallara DP of Wayne Taylor Racing will start Saturday’s GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series Porsche 250 from the inside of the second row after qualifying Friday at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.

In just his second career qualifying attempt for the team owned by his father, Jordan Taylor, the 21-year-old new full-time co-driver with Italian veteran Max “The Ax” Angelelli this season turned a fast lap of 1 minute,18.949 seconds at 104.552 mph on the 2.3-mile, 17-turn road circuit to eclipse the track record of 1:19.624 at 103.989 mph set by his brother Ricky Taylor in winning his first of 10 career poles in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing machine at Barber in 2010. Jordan Taylor’s lap today was fastest in the session until the closing minutes when both Ricky Taylor in last year’s race-winning No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP, and eventual polesitter Jon Fogarty in the No. 99 Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing Corvette DP, clocked faster laps. Jordan Taylor will start third among 28 car-and-driver combinations that will take the green flag for Saturday’s two-hour sprint race.

“It was OK, we didn’t really know what we had going into the session because nobody made any runs in the dry,” Taylor said. “We knew we’d be somewhere in the top-four, I’d say, but once we started going, we were up front for a while, so we knew we had potential to be on the pole. We actually were on the pole until the last couple of minutes. We caught some traffic, tried to get a gap, and then caught some more traffic. It was unfortunate how we ended up – P3 – because I think we had a stronger car than that. But we can’t complain too much because we have a long race ahead of us. Qualifying is quite important here at Barber. Track position is so crucial because there’s almost nowhere to pass. Hopefully we can get maybe one or two guys at the start, settle into a good position, and hopefully get a few guys in the pits. Our guys have been on fire all year on the pit stops, so I’m not too worried right now.”

Today’s pole qualifying effort by Fogarty was his second in a row this season, the third of his career at Barber, and the 25th of his career.

The top-five in qualifying for the Porsche 250 are:

1. Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing (No. 99 Corvette DP) with Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney (1:18.949 at 104.878 mph).

2. Spirit of Daytona Racing (No. 90 Corvette DP) with Ricky Taylor and Richard Westbrook (1:19.141 at 104.623 mph).

3. Wayne Taylor Racing (No. 10 Corvette DP) with Jordan Taylor and Max Angelelli (1:19.195 at 104.552 mph).

4. Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (No. 01 BMW Riley) with Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett (1:19.656 at 103.947).

4. Action Express Racing (No. 9 Corvette DP) with Burt Frisselle and Joao Barbosa (1:19.858 at 103.684 mph).

Race time is 1:45 p.m. EDT Saturday. SPEED’s next-day-delayed television broadcast is set for 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Live radio on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 90 begins at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. Live timing and scoring during all on-track sessions can be found at www.grand-am.com, and on mobile devices at m.grand-am.com and the GRAND-AM smartphone app.

ABOUT VELOCITY WORDWIDE – Velocity Worldwide is a global customer engagement agency with headquarters in New York, London, Dublin and Belfast.Velocity Worldwide has converged all digital and traditional communication channels into a single, unique platform called Darius. The Darius platform helps companies and brands create a continual conversation “eco-system” that enables them to meaningfully engage with and measure all interactions with their target audience.