Rebellion Racing took its second consecutive ALMS pole at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with Swiss ace Neel Jani taking the top spot by 0.377 of second.

Rebellion and Dyson Racing locked out the front row of the grid with their Lola chassis for the second consecutive race. Long Beach winners Muscle Milk Pickett Racing were pushed back to the second row of the grid again.

After taking its first win at Petit Le Mans last year, Rebellion now has its sights set on grabbing its first 2013 ALMS win with Jani and Nick Heidfeld.

“We’ve proved in qualifying and in the races that we have a really good pace,” Jani said.

“But we know ALMS is about strategy and traffic management, especially since the races are shorter than in WEC. So in Long Beach the race is even shorter, so we went through more tactics and strategies to get to the same level as Muscle Milk.

“So now we are hoping to show them we can get our first overall win this season. We’ve improved the car over winter with the rear wing, which we didn’t bring to Long Beach because we didn’t think it would help too much.

“And we have some bits and pieces everywhere around the car, but not too big because regulations change next year. The team, the car, drivers, engineer, we’ve been together a long time. So now we know what to do in certain situations and we know what to do to win the race.”

Other pole winners today at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca included Level 5 Motorsport’s Mario Franchitti in P2 and a first ever pole for Risi Competizione’s Matteo Malucelli in GT aboard the Ferrari 458 Italia.

CORE autosport had a stunning day. After leading both the PC class and topping the timesheets on debut in the morning session with its Porsche in GT, the team scored the PC pole and Patrick Long backed up the morning pace by qualifying second in the GT class.