Lime Rock fans could not have asked for better weather as the IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge cars took to the track for practice and qualifying.

Enjoying Lime Rock’s multiple new viewing areas, the fans saw a Chevy Camaro Z/28.R  (Lawson Aschenbach/Matt Bell) take the CTSCC Grand Sport pole while the Steven McAleer/Chad McCumbee Mazda MX-5 Miata – the team is owned by L.A. Angels pitcher C.J. Wilson, who occasionally races himself – took the Street Tuner “pole,” starting inside the fifth row. Litchfield’s Liam Dwyer, who won last year’s ST race, qualified 15th in class and will start 25th overall in he and co-driver Andrew Carbonell's Miata.

In TUDOR qualifying – Prototype Challenge (PC) and GT Daytona (GTD) – Stephen Simpson (co-driver Mikhail Goikhberg) put his ORECA FLM09 PC on pole with a blistering :49.055 lap. James French, whose only previous “experience” at Lime Rock was driving the iRacing simulator that was set-up at the IMSA/TUDOR/LRP party in SoHo this past Wednesday, qualified second, 6/10s behind Simpson. French co-drives with Conor Daly, son of racing icon Derek.

Taking pole in GTD and starting from the fourth row is the Audi R8 LMS, driven by Dion von Moltke and Chris Haase, nipping by the slimmest of margins (.009 of a second!) the Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R of Ben Keating and Jeroen Bleekemolen.

Saturday brings the two-hour CTSCC race starting at 10:00 a.m., then the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship race at 3:15 p.m. There are also two on-the-grid Fan Walks: CTSCC at 8:30 a.m. and TUDOR United at 1:40 p.m.