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Porsches dominate Miami qualifying

Porsches captured the first three positions Friday evening in Rolex Sports Car Series qualifying for the Linder Industrial Komatsu Grand Prix of Miami at the Homestead Miami Speedway. Mike Rockenfeller, driving the No. 23 Alex Job Racing/Emory ...

Published: Mar 25, 2006, 11:10 PM

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Porsches captured the first three positions Friday evening in Rolex Sports Car Series qualifying for the Linder Industrial Komatsu Grand Prix of Miami at the Homestead Miami Speedway. Mike Rockenfeller, driving the No. 23 Alex Job Racing/Emory Motorsports Porsche Crawford, won the pole, lapping the 2.3-mile, 11-turn road course in 1:13.960. Christian Fittipaldi's Cheever Racing Porsche Crawford was .372 seconds behind Rockenfeller, and David Donohue qualified third in the Brumos Racing Porsche Fabcar.

"We have raced twice and have been on pole both times," said Rockenfeller, who will share his Porsche Crawford, which also sat on the pole in the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, with fellow Porsche factory driver Patrick Long. "Last time, we didn't win the race, so I hope we can do better this time. It's nice to be on pole, but the goal is to win the race. And we want to get the checkered as the first car on Saturday, but everyone else wants the same. The car was really fast. We tried to concentrate on the race setup so we used all of the time to get a nice set up. I had two or three clear laps and I was running fine."

Fittipaldi hopes his second place qualifying effort will help his team forget its performance in the last race in Mexico City. "In the last race in Mexico we were not up to our high standards. I think we really could have done better. I was pretty happy to get out of the race finishing fifth because we had a lot of problems during the race. I lost power steering with 20 laps to go and then I lost the fuel pump with 10 laps to go. At one point, I didn't' even think we were going to finish the race. Then we came over here and the car was pretty decent. We ran a lot on used tires and I think we have a very good strong car for the race. We have definitely worked more on the race setup than we did on the ultimate lap time. As everyone knows in all of these races it's important to start up front, but it's not the most important thing. So I am very happy. I'm happy that we made progress from practice to qualifying."

The Ganassi Racing Lexus Riley of Luis Diaz and the No. 8 Synergy Racing Porsche Doran of Burt Frisselle rounded out the top-five in the Daytona Prototype class. Rolex Series point leader Jorg Bergmeister was 10th in the Krohn Racing Ford Riley.

In the GT class, Wolf Henzler set the fastest time in the Tafel Racing Porsche. "My team did a great job," said Henzler. "We were fast from the beginning. I did a couple of good lap times. It should be good for the race. I was a little bit surprised by the Pontiac, but I'm happy with my team." Andrew Davis was second in another Tafel Racing entry and Robert Bell turned in the third fastest time in Samax Porsche. The SpeedSource Mazda RX-8 of David Haskell was fourth, followed by Kelly Collins in the No. 64 TRG Pontiac GTO.R.

Saturday's race will begin at 6:30 p.m. ET and be broadcast tape delayed on the SPEED Channel starting at 8 p.m. ET.

Notes

A new team named Cyberspeed Racing announced Friday that it would join the Rolex Sports Car Series' Daytona Prototype class. The team will campaign a Pontiac Riley that will be shared by Tony Ave and new-comer Skip Cummins. "I got interested in racing about four years ago and as I'm wont to do was obsessive about it," explained Cummins, the founder and owner of Cyberspeed Racing and the chairman and CEO of Cyberonics, a publicly traded medical device company. "I got a lot of seat time in a lot of different cars in a lot of different series. And this year I decided to take the step up to the pro-level to the best road racing series in the United States. It will be a pleasure to work with a true professional like Tony."

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