Local fans coming to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park will have something extra to cheer for tomorrow with Kuno Wittmer scoring the GTLM class pole on home soil for SRT Motorsports.

The Canadian Dodge Viper driver stopped the clocks at 1:15.206 – just outpacing championship leader Antonio Garica aboard the No.3 Corvette and Wolf Henzler who was third fastest aboard the No.17 Porsche.

The pole position is the first for Wittmer in American Le Mans Series or TUDOR United SportsCar Championship competition and marks back-to-back poles for the No.93 Viper.

Wittmer’s teammate Jonathan Bomarito was on pole here last year.

“It’s still giving me some goosebumps here,” Wittmer said.

“If you look back, the first time I ran around this track I was 16 years old. Personally this is a big achievement and it’s a dream come true, really.

“It’s going to be about finishing our mission tomorrow. As far as everything unfolding today, the Dodge SRT Viper was on point. And thanks to our Michelin tires too. Everything was working really really well. The first two laps I just took it easy, I saw the track temperatures came up a little bit. We just went with a different strategy than other qualifying sessions.

“We just put the hammer down really, dug into my bag of tricks. We ended up going maybe a tenth quicker than second place. It just shows how tight the competition is in this class and I think definitely tomorrow we’ll see a repeat of that for 2h45m. It’s far from being won, but I know our team is very, very strong with strategies and know we’ll do something really nice tomorrow.

“Qualifying and race are two different animals. Qualifying is basically flat out for a long as you can until the checkered flag comes out. Our Dodge Viper is working really, really well today. Like others have seen, the car produces a lot of aerodynamic downforce. I believe we have a little bit of an edge here.

“We need to go into tomorrow with a proper plan. We’re building something nice. So far it looks like rain. We don’t know if we’ll bank on rain so we’ll just go with the flow. We can tackle any conditions. We’re really the best team out there.”

GTLM Top three
(11) #93-GTLM Kuno Wittmer (Dodge Viper SRT) 1:15.206
(12) #3-GTLM Antonio Garcia (Chevrolet Corvette C7.R) 1:15.278 (0.072-)
(13) #17-GTLM Wolf Henzler (Porsche 911 RSR) 1:15.368 (0.162-)