BRASELTON, GA (Friday, November 12, 2021) — Paul Miller Racing drivers Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers both notched first place in their respective qualifying sessions, giving the team maximum qualifying points and a first-place starting position for Saturday’s Petit Le Mans.
Snow set pole in the position-determining session by just one one-thousandth of a second. At a speed of 100 mph around Road Atlanta, that distance would amount to just 1.76 inches at the line.
Sellers followed up Snow’s performance in the No. 1 Total lubricants-backed machine by notching a 1:18.932 lap time, good enough for second at the end of the session. The Georgia resident was then promoted to first following technical inspection, earning maximum points towards the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD title.
The points gained by Sellers in the qualifying session closes the gap to the No. 9 by 9 points—from 50 to 41—going into tomorrow’s season finale.
“Today’s qualifying was really important in two ways,” Paul Miller Racing team owner, Paul Miller, said.
“First, it narrowed our points margin to the No. 9. Going into tomorrow’s championship fight, Bryan scoring maximum points during our session was hugely important and puts us on better footing towards the title.
“Second, getting pole gives this team confidence and a morale boost. It’s always good to go into a fight like we’ll have tomorrow knowing that, not only do we have a good car for the race, we have a fast car. We’ve done quite literally everything we can today to set us up for tomorrow’s race.”
The 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta goes green Saturday at 12:10 PM. Coverage will begin on NBC network television at 12 noon and run for three hours. At 3:00 PM ET, coverage will shift to NBCSN for the remainder of the race.
Live flag-to-flag coverage will be available on TrackPass on NBC Sports Gold and on the NBC Sports App with authentication.
See below for the championship points possibilities going into tomorrow’s race.
Madison Snow
“It was a good day and a really good qualifying session! Yesterday we weren’t so great in practice, but today we put everything together. We thought about it quite a bit from the engineering perspective and made changes. I think the track conditions today were really great; it was a little colder out there than yesterday, but warm enough with the afternoon sun. It offered a lot of grip for us, and we were able to optimize when the front and rear tires came in. Tomorrow will be quite a bit different with the temperatures being lower, but we have a good car, we have a comfortable car for the race, and I’m looking forward to that!”
Bryan Sellers
“Today was perfect. We knew what we had to do coming in here, and we started off on the right foot. The fortunate thing is, we have a good starting position. The unfortunate thing is, that really doesn’t mean anything for a 10-hour race! But, it proves we have a good race car. Now, what we do is we focus forward and try to execute tomorrow. This was a step in the right direction, but I know the No. 9 team isn’t sitting back with their feet up; they are there working to come after us. But, we’ll do the best we can, and I know we’re all excited to go race now.”