GMG’s Sofronas on Pole For COTA Race 1

Photo: Dan Bathie/McLaren

James Sofronas claimed pole position at the Circuit of The Americas for the first regularly scheduled race of the McLaren Trophy America weekend in Austin.

The GMG Racing driver put his Am class No. 14 McLaren Artura Trophy Evo at the top of the times with a 2:08.377 lap to outpace stablemate and Pro class pole-sitter Andre Solano by 0.527 seconds.

The pair of GMG drivers, alongside RWE’s James Li, who qualified third in his Pro No. 74 Artura Trophy Evo, all traded fastest laps throughout the 15-minute session, with Sofronas’s seventh lap enough to secure the overall pole.

TechSport’s Colin Harrison was fourth fastest, with the No. 919 Skip Barber Racing entry of Cooper Broll rounding out the overall top five times.

Alexandra Hainer twice jumped to the top of the timing sheets in the No. 43 Motorsports in Action McLaren she shares with Jesse Lazare, trading quick laps with Li and Sofronas in the first half of the session. Her 2:09.916 laptime was enough to secure the Pro-Am pole as the sixth overall best lap.

Sofronas had his fifth lap attempting invalidated for track limits at Turn 5, but kept it clean for his benchmark pole time, two laps later. No other lap times were invalidated in a session that ran entirely green.

Hooper Street Racing’s Bob Stockard filed to meet the maximum qualifying time threshold and will start this afternoon’s race from the back of the grid as a result.

Race 1 of the weekend goes green this afternoon at 2:50 p.m. CST with live streaming coverage available on McLaren Automotive and SRO’s GT World YouTube channels.

RESULTS: Qualifying