The No. 35 Maserati MC12 will start sixth on the GT1 grid for the final race in the 2005 American Le Mans Series, set for Saturday afternoon at Laguna Seca Raceway. Maserati factory driver Andrea Bertolini, who shares driving duty in the Maserati with Fabrizio de Simone, qualified in one minute 22.008 seconds on the 2.238-mile road course. He said the track's low grip was exacerbated by sand and gravel resulting from several off- track excursions by competitors. Race officials have placed cones inside some of the corners to delineate the track line for the race.

Bertolini also set the team's fastest lap during the Thursday evening practice, the first of three practice sessions before qualifying on Friday. The evening practice helped the team prepare for the four-hour race on Saturday, in which the final minutes will be run after dark. Maserati competes with an MC12 in compliance with the rules of IMSA and matches FIA GT Championship GT1 specifications. The team will not score points in the American Le Mans Series Championship.

Andrea Bertolini: "It's difficult because all yesterday and today, I didn't have grip. It's a very low level of grip and very difficult for us. We worked a lot on the balance of the car because yesterday and this morning we had a lot of understeer. The car now is balanced, but I am not very confident for the race. I think it will be a very strange race with a lot of safety cars [caution periods] because the sand and gravel are unbelievable. This is not good for us because it takes too long for our tires to warm up after a restart."

Fabrizio de Simone: "In night practice, it was a bit hard to bring the tires to temperature and the track was really, really dirty the last part of the practice. There was sand everywhere; it was really awful. With the cones they put inside the corners, I hope it will be better. It's also quite dark in many points."

GT1 QUALIFYING: POLE POSTION FOR THE ACEMCO SALEEN

Terry Borcheller brought ACEMCO Motorsports its second pole in three events with a record-breaking lap of 1:20.307 in the No. 63 Saleen S7R. He shattered Olivier Beretta's mark, set last season, by about 0.7 seconds. Borcheller, who will share duties with Johnny Mowlem, also won the class pole at the Grand Prix of Mosport. He has a fondness for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, especially considering his 2001 class win in a Saleen, as well. That capped off his drivers championship season. "It's got a great rhythm," Borcheller said of the track. "You can get into a groove that is pretty serious. In a lot of the corners, you can flow a lot of speed into them and we had it right on today."

Second and third were Corvette Racing's two Corvette C6-Rs. The No. 3 entry of Ron Fellows and Johnny O'Connell was the quicker of the two at 1:20.719. But both were well behind Borcheller, who hopes that this is the race where everything comes together for ACEMCO's first win in the ALMS. "In our qualifying run at Mosport, we had a pretty good gap," Borcheller said. "The car was perfect and it was a really good lap. It takes everything to come together to win a pole, and even more so when there is a large gap."