Ford Chip Ganassi Racing’s Joey Hand reached deep down when it mattered in qualifying for Sunday’s Michelin GT Challenge at VIR as the Californian made a statement with pole in the No. 66 GT. Hand’s lap of 1m40.211s knocked Alexander Sims in the No. 25 BMW Team RLL M6 off the GT Le Mans pole by a decent margin (+0.204s) and also kept Sims’ teammate John Edwards at bay in the No. 24 BMW (+0.230s).

• Starting lineup

“I rang it out,” Hand told IMSA Radio after scoring his third pole of the season. “I said, ‘if this doesn’t do it, we don’t have it.’ We rolled out of the trailer so good here. I said ‘let’s put new tires on it and low fuel and go for it.’ It’s a great start. I’m super comfy; I think we can do good things here.”

Jeroen Mul completed his second day of total mastery in GT Daytona with the No. 16 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 as the Dutchman become the first driver to score two GTD poles in 2017.

After leading FP1, FP2, FP3 and qualifying, Mul’s lap of 1m43.391s was once again in a class of its own as Jesse Krohn in No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 (+0.230s) and Andrew Davis in the No. 57 Stevenson Motorsports Audi R8 LMS (+0.379s) had no answer for the green Lambo.

“I have to say the team has done such an amazing job,” he said. “[The car] has been flying from the start. The car has been awesome in all conditions. This pole victory is an amazing feeling yet again.”

Sunday’s GT-only IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race gets under way at 1:35 p.m. ET.