Marco Werner's affinity for street circuits shone again Friday. The Audi factory driver captured the overall pole position for Saturday's Acura Sports Car Challenge of St. Petersburg presented by XM Satellite Radio with a record run, besting Penske Racing's Romain Dumas as Audi looked to regain its winning ways in the American Le Mans Series. Werner's best lap was a 1:02.825 (103.144 mph) around the 1.8-mile, 14-turn circuit on the bayfront of St. Petersburg. His time also beat Dumas' overall pole-winning time from 2007 by 0.214 seconds in the diesel-powered Audi R10 TDI he will share with Lucas Luhr. And it could have been even better. Werner was on pace to improve his time on the next lap before running too hard into Turn 8 and spinning the car. The R10 did stop before impacting the tire barrier so there was no damage. LMP2 cars held the next seven positions, led by Dumas in Penske's No. 7 Porsche RS Spyder. His time of 1:03.578 (101.922 mph) was just 0.129 seconds better than David Brabham in the Patrón Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-01b and another 0.03 seconds faster than Sascha Maassen in the second Penske Porsche. Dumas and Timo Bernhard won the season-opening Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with Emmanuel Collard, a historic victory for Penske and Porsche. The duo won eight times in P2 with six overall wins in 2007. Olivier Beretta led Corvette Racing's 1-2 effort in GT1 with his 21st career pole position, a lap of 1:09.727 (92.934 mph) to best teammate Johnny O'Connell by 0.541 seconds. Beretta also was the class pole-sitter at St. Petersburg in 2007 and extend his lead in career Series fast qualifiers. Wolf Henzler captured his first career pole position with a record run in Flying Lizard Motorsports' No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. The German factory driver turned a lap of 1:11.745 (90.320 mph) as Porsche captured its first pole in GT2 since Jörg Bergmeister's fast qualifying run at Road America in 2006. Henzler bested Tomas Enge's qualifying mark from last year by 0.280 seconds.
ALMS: Werner Puts Audi on St. Pete Pole