Weisenberg Takes Pole in Austin for Race 1

Photo: Fred Hardy/SRO

Lucas Weisenberg stormed to pole position at the Circuit of The Americas for the first Toyota GR Cup North America race of the weekend.

The Lucas Racing driver propelled his No. 46 Toyota GR86 Cup car to the top of the times on his third flying lap, reeling off a 2:26.900 time to secure the pole.

Jaxon Bell was close behind with his best effort, a mere 0.039 seconds off of Weisenberg’s pace in the No. 7 Copeland Motorsports machine.

RVA Graphics Motorsports by Speed Syndicate’s Will Robusto was third-quickest, just over one-tenth of a second off the pace, with BSI Racing’s Westin Workman just behind in fourth. Spike Kohlbecker, meanwhile, rounded out the overall top five for RVA.

Copeland’s Jonn Dean secured the Legends class pole with his 2:27.363 benchmark time, emerging sixth fastest overall in the 15-minute session. Livio Galanti qualified second in Legends and ninth overall.

Series debutant Rutledge Wood qualified 28th in his Precision Racing LA Toyota, but outqualified three of his Legends class competitors ahead of his first-ever GR Cup race later this afternoon.

During the session, Alex Garcia, Massimo Sunseri, Jenson Sofronas, Ethan Tovo, Ethan Ayars and Workman all served drive-through penalties for track limits violations.

Despite minor excursions in the runoffs and explorations of track limits, all 31 drivers kept their GR86 Cup cars on circuit, and the session ran without interruption as a result.

Race 1 of the GR Cup weekend takes the green flag at 3:55 p.m. CST with live streaming coverage available on both grcup.com and on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Qualifying