Reflecting the fierce level of competition in the ALMS GT class, qualifying for today’s American Le Mans–Monterey saw starting grid positions determined not by tenths, but rather by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.

Darren Turner’s #007 Aston Martin Vantage took the GT pole on the hilly 2.238 mile circuit with a lap of 1:22.229, an impressive 0.432 seconds clear of the next qualifiers. The spread from second through eighth on the GT qualifying was just 0.281 seconds.

Tommy Milner took the second spot with a 1:22.691 aboard the Long Beach winning #4 Corvette. Joerg Muller put the #55 BMW third at 1:22.905. Then things got impossibly tight.

Patrick Long posted a 1:22:919 in the #45 Flying Lizard Porsche. Antonio Garcia in the #3 Corvette matched that time exactly to the thousandth of a second. Long will keep the fourth starting position for setting the time first.

Just four thousandths of a second behind was Johannes van Overbeek in the #01 Extreme Speed Ferrari. He in turn was just sixteen thousandths ahead of the #56 BMW of Joey Hand who was himself a mere three thousandths up on the #02 ESM Ferrari of Guy Cosmo.

For much of the session five different manufacturers held the top five positions.

Corvette Racing’s former ALMS and Le Mans champion Ron Fellows notes, “You had a Corvette and Porsche run identical times and a Ferrari four thousandths of a second behind. When you see three and four thousandths of a second difference on a lap that it is 82 seconds long, you realize just how impossibly close the GT class competition is here.”

Fellows expects that pit stops, race strategies, and maybe a bit of luck, will determine the GT winner in today’s six hour race beginning at 1:30pm Pacific time. We will soon find out.