There's no stopping SunTrust Racing and Ricky Taylor, as the second-generation driver continued his march towards re-writing the GRAND-AM record books. The 21-year-old scored his fifth consecutive Rolex Series pole Saturday at New Jersey Motorsports Park.
Taylor stormed to a best lap time of 1:15.719 in his No. 10 Dallara-Chevrolet, edging out the No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Coyote-Chevrolet of Antonio Garcia by just 0.050 seconds.
The pole run for Taylor inches him closer of breaking GRAND-AM's all-time pole record held by GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing's Jon Fogarty, who achieved seven straight top starting positions in 2007.
"It's really cool but I can't take much credit for it," said Taylor who will share the wheel with Max Angelelli. "In qualifying, the car does most of the work. It's been really, really quick this year. The engineers have gotten a handle on the car and we've been able to do some adjustments, especially for qualifying. It really has shown that it pays off. Today we only had enough fuel to do two laps. We did everything just for the pole and it paid off."
With Garcia slotting in second, it marked the seventh consecutive all-front row for Chevrolet-powered Daytona Prototypes. The Spaniard, who ran a 1:15.769 lap time, was pleased with his run given the limited track time he, co-driver Paul Edwards and the rest of the all-pro driver squads achieved this weekend.
With only five sets of Continental tires allocated to teams without a Pro-Am or GRAND-AM Young Gun driver, Spirit of Daytona, as well as a handful of other teams, focused on saving as many sets for Sunday's two-hour and 45-minute race.
"It's going to be a hard race," Garcia said. "It's been really difficult with tires during practice. We had a lot of time to use but because of the amount of tires we had, most of the teams decided to run the least amount of time because it will be a tire-wear race. We did what we could for qualifying. Maybe we took it a little too conservatively. We had fuel to do five, six or seven laps. What really matters the most for us is that we need to take the car to the finish line and be in a good position."
Garcia and Edwards will be searching for their first victory of the year in tomorrow's American Red Cross 250.
The No. 99 GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing Riley-Chevrolet of Fogarty clocked the third quickest time in class, ahead of Scott Pruett's No. 01 Telmex Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-BMW in fourth.
Raphael Matos, who will share the wheel of the No. 7 Starworks Motorsport Riley-Ford with Ryan Dalziel, completed the top-five in class, but over two seconds adrift from Taylor's pole-winning lap.
Team Sahlen's celebrated its second GT pole in the last three races thanks to John Edwards' 1:24.673 lap time. It also marked the third consecutive front-row start for the family-run Mazda team after co-driver Wayne Nonammaker put the No. 42 machine on the class front row at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
"I didn't think we could really go for pole here," Edwards said. "Our car was very good over a long run and I told my engineer that I didn't expect much from qualifying, but I think we have a good car for the race. I don't think we'll be making many changes... We're just going to leave it as is and hope that it will last through a stint like we've seen in practice."
Edwards edged out the No. 31 Marsh Racing Corvette of Boris Said by just 0.042 seconds. Jonathan Bomarito completed the top-three in his No. 70 SpeedSource Mazda RX-8.
With a deadly heat wave currently rocking the Northeast, the scorching temperatures will likely play a factor in tomorrow's race. Temperatures reached 99 degrees on Saturday, with a heat index well over 110 degrees. Tomorrow's highs are expected to be in the low-to-mid 90s.
"With the heat, it's just going to throw another wrench into the party," said Boris Said. The race is going to play out more like a 24-hour race. The heat is going to battle the drivers and the crew. It's also going to be pretty tough on the cars to go two hours and 45-minutes in this heat."
The American Red Cross 250 takes the green flag Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. Catch all of the action, Live! on SPEED.
John Dagys is SPEED.com’s Sportscar Racing Reporter, focusing on all major domestic and international championships. You can follow him on Twitter @johndagys or email him at
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