After two races where the Muscle Milk Pickett Racing squad has hit mechanical trouble, Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr are out to cement their championship credentials at VIR – starting with a dominant pole position today.

Graf set a new track record for the 3.27 mile circuit – quicker than the previous mark which was set by former ALMS racer Larry Connor in a Formula 1 Benneton once raced by Michael Schumacher.

“It feels good to set the track record here. It is a beautiful facility,” Graf said.

“I think all of the drivers love the layout and variety, elevation changes, and the technical feel. It is always great to get the track record, we had another half second but I hit the traffic just wrong.

“It’s hard to not be able to show exactly what you have, but we’ll take the qualifying time. We did some testing, but our car is very sensitive to the air and temperatures so it was very different than the testing.

“We tried something new for qualifying that was different and it made us a bit quicker and is what we needed. Pole is important, even though it is a 4 hour race, it’s really a one-lane racetrack, so you want to be out front to control the pace of the field.

“The speed difference are so different, it’s hard to gauge, and the GTC guys will have trouble figuring it out in the mirror as well. Track position early in the race will be important so we can run our own strategy and our own race. These long races are different in the approach, the key for us is to make it to the 70% to score points.

“Our goal is to run trouble free all day without any mistakes. We built the team over several years, and Greg Pickett put in a lot of commitment to do this and we are at a point where we are really a world class sports car team. But we still need to improve, it’s the first time this car ran, so there is a learning curve for us. But we need to make the car more reliable and keep making everything better.”