The K-PAX/3R Racing Team bounced back from a dismal debut in Sebring, where they failed to even qualify either car, taking Pole and 3rd place in qualifying!

Randy Pobst posted the quickest time of 1:25.258 sec and Andy Pilgrim was just .02 seconds off from making it an all Weismann front row. But there is a new factor to qualifying this year- the new post-qualifying coin flip. After the session, the polewinning driver calls heads or tails, a coin is flipped and if the driver has called it correctly, he starts first. If not, the top five invert. Pobst called heads. The coin came up tails.

“It’s heartbreaking to lose the coin toss, especially for [team owner] Jim [Haughey] who loves these Volvos,” Pobst added. “To have all this hard work to achieve a goal like a pole in a World Challenge GT race, which is a very worthy goal, and then have it flipped right over… That’s just one of the breaks of racing, sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t, but I think we can work our way right back.”

"Anything is possible with this team,” Pobst said. “I knew the cars were going to be good and they’re going to continue to get better. What really helps us here is here is the Volvo is [Weismann] all-wheel drive and that’s great to have on these tight corners at Long Beach. The [Weismann] all-wheel drive was key to the pole today and the hard, hard work of the K-PAX/3R team.”

 

Both Volvos rocketed away from the standing start. Andy tried to split the front row, but was squeezed by the pair and had to back out of the throttle to keep from taking out the 3 of them out. The resulting turbo lag killed Andy's acceleration and by turn one he was in 5th.

Randy went for the outside lane and was on his way to the front when he forgot the shift! After bouncing off the rev limiter, he slammed it into the next gear, but he also had lost momentum and was in 3rd going into turn one.

And that was the closest Randy came to clawing his was back to the front. In the scorching 120 degree track teperature, both cars started to suffer from cooling issues and slowly started to fall behind. Then Randy developed some intermittent shifting issues as well that further slowed his pace.

Andy's car was shifting perfectly, but his engine was suffering from the heat. He was constantly forced out of the draft to cool the engine, further slowing his pace.

By the end of the race, Andy was in 7th place on a charge. He set fast lap of the race as he reeled in the pack in front of him and had passed two cars on the last lap and was up to 5th going into the last hairpin - going for 4th.

 

Andy picked the wrong line and found the 4th placed Mustang parked in front of him. He jerked wide tried to accelerate past. But having lost so much momentum, Andy lost the drag race and wound up 6th.

Randy finished in 8th place a few seconds back. Considering that this was the second race on the brand new cars, the K-Pax team was very content with the outcome of the weekend. They know it will only be a matter of time before they get Volvo's first win to go with their first Pole.