Is this the weekend?

“That’s been a big topic of conversation in the transporter,” said Danny Burkett. “When is our first win coming?”

After all, C.J. Wilson Racing, the team owned by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball pitcher, is used to winning in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge ST class, when they ran Mazda MX-5s.

But after stepping up to the faster GS class in 2016, and a pair of Porsche Cayman GT4s, it’s been close, but no cigar.

So could this be the weekend, since Burkett, in the No. 33 he shares with Marc Miller, topped the field in qualifying for the Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut?

“You know, we had a good shot at Daytona, but it just wasn’t our day there,” Burkett said. “Same sort of thing at Sebring. Watkins Glen, a few weeks ago we had an incident on-track with just four minutes to go that prevented us from winning the race -- but here, I think, with the short circuit, and the advantage we have in tire wear, I think we have a shot. But you never want to take anything for granted, like we saw at Watkins Glen.”

Burkett’s primary concern is the two Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-Cs, which qualified second at third. Right behind Burkett’s lap of 57.458 seconds was Scott Maxwell in the No. 15 Multimatic entry he shares with Billy Johnson, with a lap of 57.474 seconds. And a close third was the No. 76 Paul Holton and Pierre Kleinubing drive for C360R, with Holton’s lap of 57.811 seconds.

Managing tire wear and traffic -- there are 35 cars entered for the two hour, 30-minute race on the tight little 1.5-mile road course -- will be critical, Burkett said. It was 95 degrees when the GS and ST cars qualified, but since the race is at 10 a.m. ET, tire wear due to heat won’t be as critical Saturday as it will for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, which is two hours and 40 minutes long, and doesn’t take the green flag until 3:05 p.m., when track pavement temperature could hit 140 degrees as it did during Friday qualifying.

In the ST class, Chad McCumbee -- one of C.J. Wilson’s winning Miata drivers from past seasons who, in fact, won here last year -- now drives for Freedom Autosport, and he qualified that team’s No. 25 Mazda MX-5 Miata, which he co-drives with Stevan McAleer, on the pole with a lap of 59.306 seconds.

Terry Borcheller was second in the No. 34 Alara Racing Miata with a lap of 59.435 seconds, which he co-drives with Christian Szymczak. Third was still another Miata, the No. 66 Riley Racing car of Jameson Riley and A.J. Riley, with Jameson’s best lap a 59.524 sec.

“I think this track really plays to the Mazda MX-5’s strengths,” McCumbee said, hoping to repeat not only his win here, but his season championship. “We’re expecting to have a good showing tomorrow.”

McCumbee and McAleer are second in ST points with 131, which is 14 behind the leaders, Spencer Pumpelly and Nick Galante.

In the GS class, Multimatic Ford racers Johnson and Scott Maxwell are out front with 158 points, and this weekend’s top qualifier, Burkett and Miller are second with 148. Third-place qualifiers Holton and Kleinubing are third in points, too, with 140. Since the top three in points are the top three qualifiers, there should be points implications in the GS class.

That said, including Saturday’s race at Lime Rock, there are five races remaining in the 2016 season, with the next scheduled for Road America.

James Clay, owner of the Nos. 81 and 84 Bimmerworld BMW 328i teams, sat on the ST pole for the last race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, and he qualified fifth here with teammate Tyler Cooke in the No. 84. The No. 81, with Jerry Kaufman and Kyle Tilley, will start 19th in the ST class.

With so many cars in the field, Clay said, “The biggest factor is staying on the lead lap, and I would expect that to be a minority number. We would have to have a strong gap to pull out a green-flag pit stop, and so many little things can happen. But we have good cars and good drivers across the board, so, barring oddities, we should be ready to compete for the win when the final sprint gets started.

“I know our F30 cars are coming along well, but our performance seems so dependent on gearing and our ability to make that 2.0-liter turbo spool up in the power band and stay in the boost on critical sections. I think it will be a solid weekend for us.”

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