SEBRING QUALIFYING

Oliver was just pipped to pole position today by his team mate, Jan Magnussen, in what turned out to be an eventful qualifying session for Saturday's season-opening American Le Mans Series Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. During today's scheduled 25-minute qualifying session for GT cars, Magnussen negotiated the historic 3.7-mile, 17-turn course in 1:56.539, bettering his pole-winning time in last year's race by .522 seconds. Oliver also eclipsed last year's pole-winning time in the No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R with a time of 1:56.928.

The qualifying times for the GT categories were subsequently nullified when the following session for the prototypes was red-flagged before the 10-minute minimum for a qualifying session had elapsed. In accordance with the series' rules, the starting grid for all classes was then determined by practice times recorded during three official sessions.

This decision did not affect the GT1 starting lineup, as Magnussen had turned the quickest lap in practice at 1:56.269 (114.562 mph) and Gavin was second fastest at 1:56.547 (114.289 mph).

He said afterwards, “Qualifying was good in a lot of ways because we have a good configuration, good set up on the car and I was very happy with the way it was handling. I didn't really have any major issues and I could really attack the corners, which is something we haven't been able to do all week because the circuit has been quite nasty and we haven't been on the right tyres at the right time.

“It was all looking really good, and going to plan, but on the last straight - coming to the last corner - I was behind the GT2 Aston Martin and I wasn't able to get by him as I came down the straight. I had to try and pass him into the corner and he didn't really give me the room and it ended up being a mess. It's frustrating that I couldn't take it to Jan as I think it would have been extremely close, and I think we would have been within a couple of hundredths of a second of each other, but that's the way it goes.”

The weather forecast for Saturday's 12-hour endurance contest is predicting temperatures in the high 80s.

"If the prediction for warmer temperatures during the race is accurate we'll have to choose our tyres wisely, whether we're running on hard, medium or soft compound Michelins," Gavin noted. "Corvette Racing has a great deal of experience here, so the engineers and drivers are familiar with how this circuit evolves over 12 hours.