Dale Earnhardt Jr. was bumped below what would have been the cut line right at the end of round two, qualifying 13th in the No. 88 Nationwide Children’s Hospital Chevrolet with a lap of 28.606 seconds (188.772 mph).
“We were struggling off the truck; we even skipped making a mock run in practice,” Earnhardt explained. “With the tires the way they are and the stages and all of that … you’re going to have all kinds of strategy to cycle your way into position if you really want to get aggressive.”
“I wasn’t too worried about how we would qualify so we stayed in race-trim and I’m glad we did. We got the car a lot better right at the end of the last practice. … Compared to where we were when we unloaded, it was a great improvement. … We just kept going out there and making runs and ended up in the top-15. I’m pretty happy with that; we almost made it into the last round without even making a mock run in practice. That’s all race car, and (crew chief) Greg Ives and those guys are working really hard and never giving up.”
Other notables starting outside the first dozen positions include Daytona 500 winner Kurt Busch (15th), Darrell Wallace Jr. (17th), two-time season winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (18th), Danica Patrick (20th) and Kasey Kahne (23rd).
Austin Dillon was the first driver who failed to transfer out of the first round, missing the top 24 by .011 of a second in the No. 3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing after a time of 29.101 seconds (185.561 mph).
In that session, Elliott was the first driver who broke the track record, leading the way with a time of 28.506 seconds (189.434 mph) before Busch went even faster in round two.
Of note, series points leader Kyle Larson will start 40th Saturday night, after his car was unable to clear technical inspection during the opening 20-minute round.
“We just failed tech … we went through a few times, and they’ve just been busting their tails,” Larson said of his crew members. “I hate that we didn’t get to qualify, but our Target Chevy was good enough, I thought, in practice that we can cruise from the back to the front. We did at Texas earlier this year on a brand new repave, so hopefully we’ll do the same here tomorrow.”
“We’ll be fine; our team has all the confidence right now and we’ve been running strong everywhere. We’ll be fine tomorrow.”
The Quaker State 400 kicks off at 7 p.m. ET, live on NBCSN, the Performance Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.
Full qualifying results can be viewed on the next page…
