IndyCar driver Sebastien Bourdais claimed pole position for the Sebring 12 Hours aboard the best of the Action Express Coyote-Chevrolet Corvette DPs.

Bourdais, who again shares the car with fellow Daytona 24 Hours winners Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi, took the pole with a best lap of 1m51.917s.

That put him just under two tenths clear of the second-placed OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan LMP2 driven by Olivier Pla.

“I took my time and strung some laps together and at the end pretty much optimised the lap,” said Bourdais.

“I tried to go again at the end, but overcooked it, so that was pretty much what I had.”

Bourdais admitted surprise that there was no challenge from the Ford-powered Daytona Prototypes from the Chip Ganassi and Michael Shank teams, which had shared out the top spot in each of the four free practice sessions.

“It looked like we were four tenths off in every session on the theoretical [fastest lap],” he said.

“I was expecting to close the gap, but not to be on the pole.”

The fastest of the Ford-powered DPs ended up only sixth behind Ricky Taylor in the Wayne Taylor Racing Dallara-Chevrolet Corvette DP, Ryan Dalziel’s Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b and Klaus Graf in the Muscle Milk/Pickett Racing ORECA-Nissan 03.

Scott Dixon’s 1m53.098s in the best of the Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford EcoBoost DPs left him more than a second from the pole.

CHRISTENSEN PUTS PORSCHE ON GT POLE

New Porsche driver Michael Christensen claimed pole position in the ultra-competitive GT Le Mans class for the factory CORE Autosport team.

Christensen topped the times aboard his Porsche 911 RSR with a 1m58.933s, which gave him the category pole by just under a tenth from Dirk Muller in the best of the Rahal BMW Z4s.

The second BMW, driven by Bill Auberlen, was a further seven hundredths behind in a class where the top six cars were separated by just three tenths.

Bruno Junqueira took the pole in the one-make Prototype Challenge class in the best of the RSR Racing entries.

His pole mark of 1m54.839s put him seven tenths clear of second-placed Tom Kimber-Smith in the 8Star Motorsports car.

Dane Cameron was fastest in the GT Daytona class aboard the Turner Motorsport BMW Z4 with a time of 2m04.258s, which shaded Alex Job Porsche driver Leh Keen’s best by just one hundredth of a second