Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was the first driver below the cut line in round two, with a time of 28.327 seconds (190.631 mph) placing his No. 17 Fastenal Ford 13th on the grid for Sunday’s race.
“We definitely picked up for the qualifying session. Brian and all the guys worked on this Fastenal Ford and got it better,” Stenhouse said. “I thought we needed to pick up a half-a-tenth from the first run and we didn’t do that. We did identical lap times to our first run.”
“I didn’t think that (lap) was going to make it in and we were 11th at the time, then Denny and Brad went out and went a little quicker. 13th isn’t a bad starting spot for 600 miles. … I don’t really have any superstitions about it; I just know that 13th is better than 23rd or 14th, 15th or 16th. The closer you can start to the front of these races, especially here at Charlotte, the better an opportunity you have to make a great race out of it. Track position means a lot here; I think we saw that in the All-Star Race … so we’re going to try to keep our track position while the sun goes down and then hopefully we’ll have it set-up for the nighttime.”
Other notables in the middle of the field include eight-time Charlotte winner Jimmie Johnson (14th), his teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. (19th) and Joey Logano (23rd).
Regan Smith, subbing for Aric Almirola for the second-straight weekend at CMS, timed in 25th in round one and was the first car eliminated from that group.
The opening, 20-minute round also saw numerous inspection woes that gave nearly a dozen teams a late start to qualifying and kept two cars from making a run at all.
After making contact with the wall in practice, Kyle Larson’s No. 42 Target Chevrolet failed to clear LIS inspection and kept him from completing a lap in the first round.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points leader will start 39th on Sunday, alongside Corey LaJoie, who also failed to make a qualifying attempt.
According to NASCAR officials, the team didn’t get the car positioned on the LIS platform the right way, and the LIS system itself was “working fine.”
Second practice for the Coca-Cola 600 is at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning (FS1, PRN, SiriusXM).
Full qualifying results can be viewed on the next page…
