Ricky Taylor, who with his younger brother and co-driver Jordan Taylor is seeking the team’s third consecutive Belle Isle victory this weekend, put the Konica Minolta Corvette on the front row for the third race in a row with a fast lap of 1 minute, 24.796 seconds at 99.769 mph around the 2.36-mile, 13-turn temporary street circuit. Taylor’s bid for a third consecutive pole position for the team fell just five-hundredths of a second short of Christian Fittipaldi’s pole-winning lap in the No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP. Taylor will start second in the field of 23 car-and-driver combinations that will take the green flag for Saturday’s one-hour, 40-minute event.

 

“It’s a shame, but I guess it’s always a nice thing when you’re disappointed about qualifying second but, man, Christian did a good lap,” said Taylor, who swapped fast laps with Fittipaldi several times early in the session before catching the slower No. 31 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Eric Curran and never getting a clear lap the rest of the way. “I said to the guys on the radio that I haven’t pushed that hard and gotten that close to the wall, ever. So, hats off to those (No. 5 Action Express) guys. They seem to be back on their game after a couple of races of being in a bit of a funk. Tomorrow, it’ll back to that hard, IMSA racing that makes this such a great series. It’s going to be a really tough fight, especially in the wet. I must’ve sounded a bit panicked in the car when I was asking our guys if we had time for another lap if I backed off for a bit after catching the 31. On that lap, when I caught him, my guys said to keep pushing. I think I might have had a little more had he not been there in front of me, but I think they (the No. 5 of Fittipaldi) had the package to beat today so, again, hats off to them.”

 

Race time is 12:05 p.m. EDT Saturday with FOX Sports 2 providing a live telecast beginning at noon. FOX Sports 1 will rebroadcast the race beginning at 2 p.m. Live timing and scoring during all on-track sessions is available at IMSA.com and the IMSA smartphone app.