Doug Peterson, of Bonita Springs, Fla., captured his first-career SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge GT Championship pole today in spectacular fashion, and will lead the field tomorrow to the start of the season at the 55th Annual Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring at Sebring International Raceway. Fellow Corvette pilot Eric Curran, of East Hampton, Mass., will start second.
Driving the No. 87 3-Dimensional Services/LG Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette, Peterson needed only one flying lap around the historic 3.7-mile circuit to turn a 2:07.679 (104.324 mph)—shattering the year-old qualifying mark held by Leighton Reese by 1.085 seconds.
“Being in this position feels pretty scary, †Peterson admitted. “Before the session I was speaking with my race engineer and we agreed that if we were able to do a 2:09.3 that we’d call it a day; maybe end up sixth or seventh and save the tires. These [Toyo] Tires are just so phenomenal on the first lap. I had no idea what kind of lap time I was doing. I was just driving as fast as I could. The car was really planted, the track extremely fast.
“I went out of the pits and was following the Whelen cars [Sonny Whelen and Curran]. I wasn’t in the draft, but I could see how deep they were going into corners and knew I could go deeper because of my StopTech calipers and Cobalt brake pads.
| 
|