Risi Competizione’s Jaime Melo will start the tenth annual running of the prestigious Petit Le Mans event from pole position in the GT2 class after setting a time of 1:21.660 in today’s tense qualifying session. He placed his #62 Ferrari F430 GT 0.13 seconds ahead of the Petersen/White Lightning Ferrari of Dirk Müller.
The Brazilian and his race engineer, Rick Mayer, took a very measured approach to qualifying, but Melo left it to the dying seconds of the session to post the pole-winning time. He already had provisional pole position but, with a gap of only three hundredths of a second between himself and Muller, Jaime decided to have one more shot at a hot lap. He came into the pits for a small tire pressure change and managed to cross the start-finish line to start his final, flying lap just six seconds before the checkered flag came out.
It was Jaime’s first visit to the Road Atlanta track, but he was ready to admit that qualifying here today wasn’t easy. “I fought quite hard, and the #31 car was very close. I got a lot of traffic at the beginning so I couldn’t enjoy the new Michelin tires like I would like to do, but it’s okay because we are on pole! The race is very long and we have a good car so I’m looking forward to it. The track surface had less grip than yesterday because of the rain we’ve had, and it changed the car’s balance a little bit as well but it’s the same for everybody. The important thing is that we are happy with the car and that’s good for tomorrow. ”
Qualifying didn’t run quite as smoothly for Tracy Krohn in the #61 Krohn green Ferrari 430 GT. With Krohn Racing’s base being at the Atlanta track, the tall Texan elected to qualify and ended up setting his fastest time of the week so far. His best lap of 1:24.987 places him on the 5th row of the GT2 grid.
“It was a little bit of an off day, ” he said afterwards. “I spun the car twice – once at (Turn) 3, and at (Turn) 6 I did the same thing. The track was much greener and very slippery in places, particularly in the high speed corners. The car was actually quite good and I ran quicker than I’ve run all week. We’re really just now actually starting to get the car dialed in, so I feel pretty good about the race. ”
Risi Competizione is a Houston, Texas based racing team sponsored by Boost/Motorola, Michelin, Forza2Motorsport, Putnam Leasing, Tessera, Freescale Semiconductors, Q Horsepower, Boardwalk Autogroup, Ferrari of Silicon Valley, and Ferrari of Houston.
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