Bourdais dominated prototype qualifying to become the only man into the one minute, 51 second bracket – grabbing pole at 1:51.917.

The balance between Daytona Prototype and Le Mans-style LM P2 machines seemed close with two DPs and two P2s in the top four.

Another Frenchman Olivier Pla was second fastest aboard the Oak Racing Morgan Nissan – just .059 of a second adrift.

After dominating practice earlier today, the Ganassi squad struggled for speed in qualifying to only be sixth and ninth fastest – Scott Pruett suffering an early spin before just sneaking into the top ten. Englishman Richard Westbrook also had an off track excursion en route to recording the seventh fastest time.

“It was a great qualifying for us. We didn’t know where we would be this morning, we couldn’t put a lap together,” Bourdais said.

“Traffic is very difficult to get a read on the car because we are always on the line, and you can’t set the rhythm. It’s not like it will be any easier tomorrow. It was better in qualifying because you could put three or four laps together. The car was quite enjoyable to drive, and by the end it was optimized.

“I gave it another shot at the end, but i over-did it. I’m really happy for the Corvette team and Action Express. Hopefully we can keep that pace throughout the day tomorrow. Just because you’re fast today, doesn’t mean you’ll have it tomorrow.

“We’ll reset the pace tomorrow and see what will happen. I was really expecting to close the gap a little bit, if I could put together a good lap altogether, but wasn’t expecting the fastest overall. A lot of guys made mistakes before they even banked a lap. It shows how difficult the conditions are here at Sebring.

“With a wind like this, you get a double-faced car. It goes from oversteer to understeer and changes throughout the lap. These cars are very sensitive to the wind and it can change the car a lot. We should have a good car tomorrow and we’re looking forward for trying for the win.”

Teams will return to the track tomorrow morning for the 8:00am warm-up before the race goes green at 10:15am.