Current Championship leader Randy Pobst, of Gainesville, Ga., captured the pole for Round Ten of the SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Championship minutes after collecting the SCCA SPEED Touring Car Pole at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Andy Pilgrim, of Boca Raton, Fla., will start second.Preventing a Cadillac clinch of the SCCA SPEED GT Manufacturers’ Championship Presented by RACER and giving himself another five points in his Drivers’ Championship lead, Pobst recovered from a first lap slide to put the No. 22 K-PAX Racing LLC/Jim Haughey Porsche 911 GT-3 on pole. Just after getting out of his pole-winning Mazda SCCA SPEED Touring Car, Pobst collected his 22nd-career pole with a lap of 1:29.707 (89.812 mph) around the 11-turn, 2.238-mile road course. He now needs to finish third or better to win the 2007 Drivers’ Championship, regardless of what his rivals do.”The Cadillacs are right there,” Pobst said. “When you’ve been racing as long as I have you learn that sometimes you finish on the good end of the thousandths and sometimes you finish on the bad end of the thousandths. That’s just the game and I think we got lucky.”I hate to come right out and say this, but I blew my first lap in the Porsche. I got off to a good start, but I noticed that the handling was quite a bit different than practice, which surprised me, because in Touring Car, the Mazda was very similar. The Porsche was not terribly happy that first lap, but the first lap is when you have the most grip. I had real trouble getting around those first couple of corners. I was going down to my brake point in Turn Five and I got so far to the right that I put two wheels on the curb. I think that curb was a bit wet or maybe it was the roughness and being on the edge, but I got the car sideways and screwed up the corner. I came out for my second lap, knowing that it would have to be the lap. The handling was getting better at the same time, so that second lap around, I put in a clean lap and it was just barely enough. It was luck on my part.”Pilgrim is indeed, “right there,” only 0.057-second behind Pobst. Pilgrim had hoped to win the pole and clinch the Manufacturers’ Championship for Cadillac, but a 1:29.764 (89.755 mph) put the No. 8 XM/Mobil 1/Motorola/Bose Cadillac CTS-V second on the grid.The second row will be near-identical to the first, with Pobst’s teammate, Michael Galati, of Olmsted, Ohio, starting third in the No. 23 K-PAX Racing LLC/Jim Haughey Porsche 911 GT3, after entering a 1:30.121 (89.399 mph). Pilgrim’s teammate, Ron Fellows, of Mississaugo, Ont., starts fourth in the No. 16 XM/Mobil 1/Motorola/Bose Cadillac CTS-V, turning a 1:30.209 (89. 312 mph).James Sofronas, of Newport Beach, Calif., completed the top five in his No. 14 GMG/Tolar Manufacturing Porsche 911 GT-3, with a time of 1:30.516 (89.009 mph).Although there are three Porsches in the top five, to Cadillac’s two, if a Cadillac finishes in the top six, the automaker will capture its second SCCA SPEED GT Manufacturers’ Championship.Jeff Altenburg (Dodge Viper), Michael McCann (Dodge Viper), Lawson Aschenbach (Cadillac CTS-V), Mike Davis (Ford Mustang Cobra) and Brian Kubinski (Chevrolet Corvette) completed the top ten.The SCCA SPEED GT finale will launch from a standing start tomorrow at 2:55 p.m. (PDT). Live timing and lap notes are available at http://www.world-challenge.com. The race will air on SPEED, Sunday, October 28, at 4:00 p.m. (EDT).
Randy Pobst, of Gainesville, Ga., edged Peter Cunningham, of Grafton, Wis., for the SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Touring Car pole for Sunday’s Round 10 race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and edged closer to his teammate for the Drivers’ Championship.Driving the No. 73 Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development MAZDA6, Pobst turned a 1:35.857 (84.050 mph) on his first flying lap–not a record, but 0.025-second faster than Cunningham’s 1:35.882 (84.028 mph) in the No. 42 Acura Certified Pre-Owned/RealTime Racing Acura TSX. It was Pobst’s third SPEED Touring Car pole of the season, and pulled him within 14 points of Championship leader, teammate Jeff Altenburg, going into Sunday’s finale.”I think that Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca is a MAZDA6 track,” Pobst said. “You might recall this is the track where the MAZDA6 won its first race with Jeff Altenburg a couple years ago. But, the SCCA officials adjusted our car for the last several races and it worked. It slowed us down and the car didn’t handle as well anymore. We’ve been trying to figure that out and look for a way to compensate. I know that Craig Nagler and the Tri-Point team were in the shop all week working on the cars and what they did obviously worked. I want to specifically thank Chris Degioanni my car chief, because he predicted the track, he figured it out.”I’m really pleased to get pole while Mazda is associated with the Humane Society of the United States. I’m carrying Mooch the cat on my car from the MUTTS comic strip. We visited the SPCA across the street yesterday and they named a cat after me and a dog after Jeff. I think the spirit of Mooch was probably with me.”For Cunningham, the winningest driver in series’ history, it was his best qualifying effort of the year.Ian Baas, of Noblesville, Ind., will start third after setting a fast time of 1:36.081 (83.854 mph) in his No. 18 STASIS/Team Janica/Livermore Audi A4. Pierre Kleinubing, of Coconut Creek, Fla., ran more laps than anyone in the session (11) and will start fourth based on his lap of 1:36.093 (83.843 mph) in the No. 1 Acura Certified Pre-Owned/RealTime Racing Acura TSX. Kleinubing is winless in 2007, and if he does not win on Sunday, it will be his first winless season since joining the Championship in 1997.Brandon Davis, of Denver, Colo., made it three Acura Certified Pre-Owned/RealTime Racing Acura TSXs in the top five with a fast lap of 1:36.253 (83.704 mph).Kuno Wittmer (Acura RSX), Chip Herr (Audi A4), Altenburg (MAZDA6), Nick Esayian (Acura TSX) and Seth Thomas (BMW 325i).Altenburg needs to finish fourth or better to clinch his first Drivers’ Championship, regardless of what the competition does. Mazda clinched the Manufacturers’ Championship Presented by RACER at the most recent round at Road Atlanta.Sunday’s race makes its standing start at 12 noon (Pacific). Tune in to world-challenge.com to follow live timing and race notes via the SCCA Pit Board. Sunday’s race will be broadcast Saturday, Oct. 28 at 3 p.m. (Eastern) on SPEED.
SCCA Pro Racing and SPEED announced today that the SCCA SPEED World Challenge Championships will again be broadcast on SPEED in 2008, marking the 13th year of its partnership.For the 10th-straight year, each SCCA SPEED Touring Car and SCCA SPEED GT race will feature one-hour broadcasts on a tape-delayed basis on the network, generating 20 hours of unique programming.”We are very pleased to continue our partnership with SPEED Channel,” SCCA Pro Racing President & CEO Robert Wildberger said. “This series has experienced tremendous growth in the last 13 years and much of that is due to SPEED’s involvement. We have a lot of items in the works to enhance the programs, including a larger broadcast presence on the Web.””It gives us great pleasure to continue the longest-running relationship SPEED has with any sanctioning body,” SPEED Senior VP of Production and Network Operations and Executive Producer Rick Miner said. “SCCA Pro Racing provided the first racing event on SPEED in February of 1996 and continues to be a pillar of our motorsports programming.”The 2008 season will be the 19th year of SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge competition. In 1999, SCCA Pro Racing and SPEED Channel formed a partnership with the series, naming SPEED as the title sponsor in addition to its broadcast partner. Split into two, separate race series–SCCA SPEED GT and SCCA SPEED Touring Car–the World Challenge Championships feature the cars people drive the way they wish they could drive them. SCCA SPEED World Challenge–this is how racing should be.SPEED is the nation’s first and foremost cable television network dedicated to motor sports and the passion for everything automotive. From racing to restoration, from mainstream to the ultimate extremes, SPEED delivers quality programming from the track to the garage. Now available in more than 78 million homes in North America, SPEED is among the fastest-growing sports cable networks in the country, the home to NASCAR on SPEED and an industry leader in interactive TV, video on demand, mobile initiatives and broadband services.For additional information about SCCA SPEED World Challenge, visit http://www.world-challenge.com. For additional information about SPEED, visit http://www.speedtv.com. For additional information about SCCA Pro Racing, visit http://www.sccapro.com.