Rebellion Racing’s Neel Jani has stormed to pole position on the streets of Long Beach to score his team’s second ALMS series pole.

The Swiss ace stopped the clocks at 1:12.600 to be the only driver to dip into the 1 minnute, 12 second bracket.

Dyson Racing’s Guy Smith was second fastest – pulling off a great fightback for the team after an early electrical fire which forced the team to change engines after the morning practice session.

The reigning series champions Muscle Milk Pickett Racing will start from P3 after Lucas Luhr was unable to push their HPD entry lower than the 1 minute, 14 second bracket.

“For us, you say, Toyota on pole at Toyota Grand prix,” Jani said.

“But we didn’t expect it to be such a big gap. This is the first time we are bringing this car to a street course, and the car is developed for Le Mans. That is all our setups we know driving in the WEC.

“We had no idea how to do the setup, it is a lot of first and second gears, normally you are in fourth and fifth gears on the corners. Our engineers did a great job getting us a car to start with.

“Then we improved it just a little bit, so again, I’m surprised we did so much of a gap.”

In P2, Ryan Briscoe made it two poles in two years in two separate championships. Last year the Australian was on pole in the IndyCar race, this year he’ll lead the P2 class for Level 5 Motorsports aboard their HPD machine.

Extreme Speed Motorsport was second and third with Scott Sharp leading Johannes van Overbeek.

Tomorrow’s GT race looks set to be another classic with SRT Viper taking the pole – their first since returning to the series at Mid-Ohio last year.

Dominik Farnbacher was fastest in the No.91 car while the sister No.93 car of Jonathan Bomarito was third fastest.

The Porsche of Bryan Sellars split the duo while Jan Magnussen was the fastest Corvette in fourth place.

Tomorrow’s two hour Grand Prix of Long Beach is greet the green flag at 4:30pm (local time).