Pumpelly, TRG The Racers Group Take Pole in the Streets of Long Beach

Pumpelly, TRG The Racers Group Take Pole in the Streets of Long Beach
  • Top 12 Qualifiers Within 1-Second for Tight Sunday Battle
  • Even mix of Pro and Am drivers in contention for overall top spot

Saturday's Qualifying session at the Streets of Long Beach Presented by AWS saw TRG The Racers Group's efforts pay off with driver Spencer Pumpelly capturing the pole in the #66 Porsche 718 Cayman CS MR. The provisional pole-qualifying lap, set at 1:25.916, provisonally sets a new GT4 Qualifying record for the circuit and sees the Pro-class driver in front of the highly-contested field.

"The first lap we did the tires weren't quite up to temp, but it was a decent lap that was good enough for P1 at the time," Pumpelly explained. "As we went on I knew it wouldn't hold so I started to prep for a second one, and I got a little worried that we may have used up too much tire trying to get by Ian. (Getting) pole here is important, now that we're there we just have to make sure that we can make our car last."

Next to Pumpelly on the front row is Team Panoz Racing pro Ian James, driving the #40 Panoz Avezzano GT4. His 1:26.114 lap was just short of recapturing the pole, which he exchanged with Pumpelly and others throughout the duration of the session. "We're looking forward to tomorrow. It's going to be tough to overtake but we'll give it max effort," said James. "This is GT4 racing, there's never a time to relax at all. Hopefully we'll be strong the whole stint and hopefully Spencer (Pumpelly) won't so we look forward to some good clean racing tomorrow."

At the start of row two is the highest qualifying Am and Team Panoz teammate Matt Keegan, driving the #51 Panoz Avezzano GT4 to a slightly-slower 1:26.285-second lap time. Next to him, MarcoPolo Motorsports' Nicolai Elghanayan will line up with a 1:26.326 effort in the #71 KTM X-Bow.

While the top 12 of the field are within one second of each other with an almost even distribution of Pro and Am drivers, the third row of the grid is locked down by Ams Drew Staveley (#12 Ian Lacy Racing Ford Mustang GT4) and Jarrett Andretti (#18 Andretti Autosport McLaren 570S GT4) with 1:26.397 and 1:26.412 lap times respectively.

Drivers take to the track for Sprint Rd. 3 action on Sunday when the green flag drops at 10:00 am PDT. Follow along with live timing and scoring, free live streaming, or free satellite radio on SiriusXM; timing and scoring and live stream links can be found on www.GT4-America.com, and SiriusXM will broadcast on channel 383 (983 app). CBS Sports Network will premiere the Streets of Long Beach episode on Sunday, April 21 at 7:00 pm EDT - check your local listings for channel and encore broadcast times.