Kurt Busch ended round two as the highest-placed driver who failed to advance, and he will start 13th in the No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford after posting a lap of 29.649 seconds (186.988 mph).
Among those who were knocked out in round two were Daytona 500 runner-up Ryan Blaney (14th), seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson (18th), and rookies Daniel Suarez (21st) and Erik Jones (23rd).
Clint Bowyer was the first driver who failed to advance out of the opening round, bumped out by Austin Dillon as the red and black flags came out and missing the transfer by .001 of a second, or three inches on the race track.
Bowyer will start 25th in his No. 14 Haas Automation Ford after posting a time of 29.723 seconds (186.522 mph).
Other notables eliminated in the opening round included Ty Dillon (26th), Kasey Kahne (29th) and David Ragan (34th), who slapped the wall on his first run and did not record a lap.
“That certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to start off the weekend in our Camping World Ford,” Ragan said. “The track got a lot tighter than what it was earlier in practice, so we made some pretty big swings for qualifying. I drove off into turn one and just didn’t have the side bite on corner exit. I was throttled up and just got the rear end out of the race track … popped the wall.”
“Even though it seems like a minor incident, there’s really nothing minor about touching the wall at 190 miles per hour. I’ve kind of put our Front Row Motorsports team behind the eight-ball now … but we’ve got all day tomorrow to work on the car and we’ll just focus on getting ready for race time on Sunday.”
Five drivers did not take time at all during qualifying: Jeffrey Earnhardt, Michael McDowell, Cole Whitt, Derrike Cope and Cody Ware.
With only 39 cars on the grounds, all drivers in attendance made the field for Sunday’s race.
The next on-track activity for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams will be an 80 minute final practice session, which goes green at noon ET on Saturday (FS1, PRN, SiriusXM).
Qualifying results can be viewed on the next page…
