Menard on Trans Am Sonoma pole after another qualifying scrub

For the second day in a row, rain forced the abandonment of Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli National and Western Championship qualifying at Sonoma Raceway, leading to the field being set by practice times. Paul Menard in the No. 3 Pittsburgh Paints/Menards Ford Mustang will lead the field to green after setting a time of 1m30.148s in Saturday morning’s practice session. He will be joined on the front row by Chris Dyson in the No. 16 GYM WEED Ford Mustang.

TA Cup’s Michelle Nagai (No. 72 Nagai Racing/Berkeley Jet Drive Chevrolet Camaro) was fastest of the Western Championship competitors, starting sixth overall after laying down a practice lap of 1m33.607s. Joshua Carlson (No. 36 Enseva/Diercks Ltd./TC Fab Ford Mustang) was the fastest National Championship competitor in the SGT class, while JD Koos (No. 12 Nicole Douglas Design Porsche GT3 Cup 991.1) was best in the class of the Western Championship competitors. Chris Coffey (No. 97 Traffic Grafix/Chill Out Motorsports Maserati MC GT4) was fastest in the GT class. Xuanqian Wang in the Western Championship is the sole competitor in the XGT class, but did not make a time in practice due to a crash in Friday’s testing session.

The TA/GT race will be contested Sunday at 1:35 p.m. ET. It will be streamed live on Trans Am’s YouTube channel and broadcast live on SPEED SPORT 1 with coverage beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET. An encore presentation will air on SPEED SPORT 1 at 7:30 p.m. ET. For more information on where you can watch SPEED SPORT 1, click here.

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