Action Express Racing’s chances of championship success went up a notch after Christian Fittipaldi scored the pole at Road Atlanta today in preparation for this weekend’s Petit Le Mans.

The Brazilian out-paced rival Ricky Taylor to grab the top spot on the time sheet – mirroring their championship positions.

“It was definitely a very strong run out there today,” Fittipaldi said.

“We knew we had a good car based on our lap times from yesterday. We managed to go out on two sets of new tires during practice. We knew more or less what the car would do. I have to admit the track was a little worse than it was yesterday.

“After I saw the 2nd red, I knew there would only be a few minutes. I knew I had to nail it on probably lap two maximum. After that it went to the checker and it was all over.”

The qualifying session was disrupted by two red flags. Firstly Alex Brundle stopped off course and then the other half of the Action Express squad did not fare as well. After the Mazda of Tristan Nunez spun, the P2 machine was struck by the No.9 Corvette DP of Brian Frisselle as Nunez tried to return to the track.

Fittipaldi and teammate Joao Barbosa are not only chasing the driver’s championship tomorrow, the Brazilian/Portuguese combination wants to secure the team’s title for Action Express Racing as well.

“We have a couple of goals for tomorrow, we pretty much split it in a way that a) the car has to start. If we roll down after the pace lap we get the team championship,” Fittipaldi said.

“Then priority number two is to get Joao and myself 45 minutes of running. After that we clinch the driver championship. After that we’ll start looking at getting the race win.

“First we’re definitely looking at the big picture. After we go the first hour and a half we’ll see where we stand. We’ve really been working well this way, for example, since the last race, even in Austin, we were really cautious the whole race. We knew we had to bring the win back home.

“We ended up leading Austin on a bigger gap than we expected. In the back of my mind, if we came to this last race leading by eight points I’d be really happy. But we ended up leaving leading by 22. It’s by no means finished yet and I’ve seen many crazy things happen in racing. I want to go over this championship stuff after the race, I really don’t want to talk about it.”