Paul Holton eked out the GS pole by 0.017 seconds for Saturday’s Biscuitville Grand Prix at Virginia International Raceway, in a new qualifying lap record for the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge.

Holton’s best lap in the No. 76 Compass Racing McLaren 570S GT4, a 1:54.175, was good enough to edge Tyler McQuarrie in the No. 39 Carbahn Motorsports Audi R8 LMS GT4.

It marked Holton’s second consecutive Continental Tire Challenge pole, following a drama-filled hour in the build up to qualifying.

“We discovered a coolant leak an hour before qualifying so that’s why we weren’t out for practice three,” said Holton. “We scrambled to get it together, rolled it out 10 minutes before qualifying and stuck it on the pole.”

Spencer Pumpelly will start third in the No. 28 RS1 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport MR, followed by Ty Majeski and Owen Trinkler for Multimatic and Team TGM, respectively.

The top eight cars were separated by less than half a second, with the top seven all breaking the previous track record and top six positions were from six different manufacturers.

O’Gorman on TCR Pole

Tom O’Gorman narrowly edged Britt Casey Jr. to take TCR class pole position for eEuroparts.com Racing.

O’Gorman led a trio of Audi RS3 LMS TCR machines at the top of the class with Casey and his Compass teammate Rodrigo Sales claiming second and third.

O’Gorman’s best lap of 1:57.283 was a mere 0.007 seconds faster than Casey who will start to his outside.

Luke Rumburg jumped to fourth on his final lap to secure the best qualifying effort to date in the series for the Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR with his Rumcastle LLC teammate DJ Fitzpatrick clocking in the fifth fastest time.

BimmerWorld Racing’s Nick Galante earned the ST class pole position in the No. 81 BMW 328i, followed by MINI JCW Team driver Colin Mullan and Jason Rabe in the No. 21 Bodymotion Racing Porsche Cayman.

It is the fifth-consecutive class pole for the BimmerWorld team.

The two-hour race gets underway Saturday at 2:15 p.m. EDT with live coverage on IMSA.tv.

RESULTS: Qualifying