Porsche North America’s Earl Bamber scored his second TUDOR United SportsCar Championship pole at Road Atlanta today – then he went quicker, then he crashed!

The New Zealander brought out the red flag in GTLM qualifying after going off in the esses. Despite losing his fastest lap for causing the red flag, Bamber’s second fastest lap was still good enough for pole.

Bamber toppled his fellow Le Mans-winning teammate Nick Tandy to take the pole – setting the fastest lap of 1:30.304.

“Our pole was really, really good. We had a good car today,” Bamber said.

“Both Porsches were really quick. On my last lap we were getting quicker but I made a mistake in the 4th corner. I hit a river and did an aquaplane. We’ve come away with a lot of 1-2 results so I think we are going to push for that tomorrow as well.”

Corvette Racing’s Oliver Gavin pulled out the best qualifying performance for the No.4 Corvette for quite a while to be third fastest in the wet.

Bryan Sellers was not so fortunate in the final outing for the Falken Porsche this weekend – the American driver also crashing in the esses like Bamber. Sellers however was unable to set a time before suffering his first off track excursion in seven years with the Porsche squad.

The GTLM battle tomorrow is expected to be fierce but Bamber is concerned about the potential for weather to impact the race.

“The rain is going to be a big subject tomorrow,” Bamber said.

“Even on the qualifying it was right on the limit to run for qualifying. Having a lot of rain over the last few weeks, there’s not much more the ground can take. It’s not like the track has bad drainage, it’s just that the ground can’t take that much more.

“Just having the break for 10 minutes and not having the 30 plus cars moving the water, it makes a big difference. But after a restart the water levels will have gone up so cautions are going to breed cautions.”