Danish ace, 2013 American Le Mans Series co-GT champion and the world’s fastest Formula 1 dad Jan Magnussen stormed to the pole position in the GTLM class for Corvette Racing today.

Mid-way through the session, the No.3 Corvette trailed the two BMWs of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Mueller but Magnussen pulled out a storming lap of 1:17.939 on his last flier after the BMWs had returned to the pits.

The result was enough to put the father of McLaren Formula 1 racer Kevin Magnussen on the pole.

Corvette Racing team boss Doug Fehan had introduced Jan Magnussen to the Corvette coral at Sebring as “the  second fastest Magnussen in the world.” Today, the 40-year-old reclaimed the honor – at least until next week’s Chinese Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Magnussen will line up on the pole with regular Spanish co-driver Antonio Garcia. The Corvette squad is looking to bounce back after technical issues ruined their podium assaults at Daytona and Sebring with the new Corvette C7.R.

“First of all, I want to say how happy I am for the team with the pole position,” Magnussen said.

“It’s a new car, the C7.R. We knew all along it was a great race car but we couldn’t prove it. Reliability hadn’t been 100% this year, but hopefully we can have a great race from the front row. Qualifying went really well. I found a good gap, but I had to back off once to find myself a better gap, and after that it was a matter of trying to work a little bit to find the time.

“At one point we were P3, at that point I was 8/10ths faster than when we did the qualifying simulation, I didn’t know if there was any more to come. I pushed hard and it stuck, I didn’t hit any of the walls and that was the pole position.

“I think the C6R was a great car, especially for the street courses, but most importantly it is the team and the strategy and the pit stops. This is a one stop race, there’s no doubt about it, if there a yellow we’ll stop then, but the car who won the race last year had a problem early and made his stop early and was last the entire race. Not having to stop at the end during a yellow was how he won the race. sometimes we try to place it safe, and we’ve lost because of it, but i think we’ve been more successful with it.”

Top Three in GTLM class (overall in parentheses):
(9) #3-GTLM Jan Magnussen (Chevrolet Corvette C7.R) 1:17.939
(10) #55-GTLM Bill Auberlen (BMW Z4 GTE) 1:18.091 (0.152-)
(11) #56-GTLM Dirk Mueller (BMW Z4 GTE) 1:18.246 (0.307-)