Muscle Milk Pickett Racing grabbed its third consecutive series pole today with Klaus Graf behind the wheel of the No.6 HPD prototype at Road America.

Pickett’s qualifying assault was made a little easier by the fact chief rivals Dyson Racing were missing from the qualifying action after suffering a gearbox issue in practice.

Graf and teammate Lucas Luhr have their sights set on a sixth consecutive victory this weekend at Road America.  Last year the German duo triumphed over Dyson Racing’s Chris Dyson and Guy Smith in the closest overall finish in series history.

The Muscle Milk pair hold a 16 point gap over Dyson/Smith with four races remaining.

With extra points on offer here and at VIR, Graf and Luhr will be looking to extend that gap which would need to grow to 24 points before Petit Le Mans for them to grab their first championship win early.

“We always want to compete at the best level and at our own standards so we don’t really look at the competition,” Graf said.

“If you win five races in a row it’s easy to lose focus a bit, but our team won’t allow us to do that. The team has grown a lot in the last couple years and it is getting better and better and we’re always very competitive.

“Lucas and I are also very competitive against each. We have a lot of respect for each other and there is no ego involved, it’s a very healthy relationship but we all want to go out and do the best job we can.

“The #16 car wasn’t out today, so that was unfortunate, but we still went out and tried to do the perfect lap. The lap was very good and we could’ve done more laps if we had to, but there was no point in doing that. We were pleased with the performance of the car.”

Dyson’s second P1 machine steered by Eric Lux took second in the grid today while Conquest Racing took the honors in P2 with Martin Plowman behind the wheel of their Nissan-powered Morgan.