It’s the retelling of a familiar story in Mustang Challenge North America’s third season: Cole Loftsgard put his #42 Round 3 Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse R on pole once again, for the fourth time this season. Currently sitting first in the championship standings, Loftsgard will have prime track position tomorrow morning to defend his lead.
His championship rival, Devin Anderson, in the #22 TechSport Racing car, qualified second with a 1:57.145. While that lap time would have been enough to beat the fastest times set in practice earlier today, Loftsgard found a new gear and set a 1:56.664, the only driver to break the 1:57 barrier.
Will Lucas, Sandy Satullo, and Ethan Low round out the top five, with a razor-thin margin between Wheelhouse Motorsports teammates Lucas and Satullo. The Wheelhouse Motorsports Dark Horse drivers have already shown good pace this weekend in Virginia, and look to be on an upswing after the championship-winning team drivers finished a disappointing Race 2 at Watkins Glen seventh and ninth in class.
Oleg Gorshkov in the #70 Round 3 Racing car was fastest in Dark Horse Legends once again, making him two-for-two in qualifying on pole. He cut out over a second and a half from his best qualifying time to put a 1:59.651 on the board, the first sub-two-minute time of the weekend so far in Legends.
Tom Tait’s #8 Wheelhouse Motorsports Mustang showed well, with the second-fastest time of the 15-minute session. Behind him is his competition for the class championship, Chris Clarke, just 0.167 seconds back of the Wheelhouse driver. If the pace that Gorshkov has shown at Watkins Glen and in practice at VIR is anything to go off of, there is sure to be a close fight for the podium places between the top three qualifiers.
Nicholas Smither and Paolo Salvatore of the #58 Nick Smither Racing and #84 Torre Racing cars, respectively, round out the top five in Dark Horse Legends. Salvatore will look to have a clean weekend of racing this weekend after being forced to break out a spare Dark Horse R at The Glen after an incident with Smither in qualifying that cut the session short.
Race 1 will take the green flag tomorrow morning at 9:25 pm ET, with Race 2 to follow Sunday morning at 9:45 am ET.
Images © Ford
