Our first round of Super Lap Battle qualifying events took place at Firebird International Raceway in an unexpectedly cool Ari-zona May weekend. Our host Jason Boles and the NASA Arizona crew pulled out all the stops to bring out the best in Arizona road racers. For those who are unfamiliar with how our Super Lap Battle qualifying rounds work here's a little background info.
All of our qualifying rounds are held in conjunction with a NASA High Performance Driving Event (HPDE) weekend. There are four levels in the NASA HPDE program, as well as the Time Trial group. HPDE levels one and two are for beginners. Level three is the intermediate group. Level four and Time Trial are for advanced drivers. Since we're looking for the best of the best to be eligible to compete for a spot at our Finals, you have to be in level four Time Trial. For all those beginners out there striving to compete at our Finals, putting your time into the HPDE program is the only way to get into this level. For this year's event, we invited some teams from our past events to shake things up for the locals; these teams with special invites fell under the seeded category.
Tage Evanson, driving his EG K24-powered Civic, ran impressive times throughout the day and managed to clock the third fastest time in qualifying. His best time of the day (1:05.463 seconds) managed to outshine the Cobb team's Nissan R35 GTR. JC Meynet, piloting the Harman Motive Subaru STI, also tore up the track posting a respectable 1:07.519 on Yokohama Advan Neova tires, which run a 180 UTQG tread wear.
Stay tuned for our next qualifying round at Willow Springs July 12 and 13. Rumor has it that the Tomei/Cusco WRX will be making its first U.S. appearance in the Unlimited class as it plans to take over the current track record.
| Seeded Teams |
| No. | Name | Team | Car | Best Time |
| 1 | Mike Speck | | Subaru STI | 1:04.924 |
| 2 | Gary Sheehan | GST | Subaru Impreza | 1:05.460 |
| 3 | Tage Evanson | | Honda Civic | 1:05.463 |
| 4 | William Brooks | Cobb | Nissan R35 GT-R | 1:06.289 |
| 5 | Bob Endicott | Hasport | Honda CRX | 1:07.008 |
| 6 | Tanner Foust | Crawford | Subaru STI | 1:08.324 |
| Unseeded Teams |
| Limited/Unlimited |
| No. | Name | Team | Car | Time |
| 1 | Patrick Sagun | PIC | Mitsubishi Evo VII | 1:08.854 |
| 2 | Tony Szrika | UMS Tuning | Mitsubishi Evo VIII | 1:08.950 |
| 3 | Chris Willson | Science of Speed | Honda S2000 | 1:09.056 |
| 4 | Erin Morely | Goodspeed Performance Lab | Subaru WRX Wagon | 1:09.603 |
| 5 | Bits Fajardo | Mynes Performance | Mitsubishi Evo VIII | 1:09.746 |
| 6 | Scott Bush | Relentless Autosports | Infiniti G35 Coupe | 1:09.762 |