DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Report by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman — NASCAR photo —
What a difference five months has made for Daniel Suarez at the Daytona International Speedway.
In February, the Mexican-born driver for Joe Gibbs Racing and NASCAR Next alumni was involved in an opening round crash during qualifying for the season-opener at DIS that destroyed his Toyota Camry and got his season off to a sour start.
Fast forward to Saturday afternoon. After leading the opening round of knockout qualifying, Suarez was the final car to go out in the second and final round at the historic 2.5-mile superspeedway — and he made the late run pay dividends with his first career series pole in his 17th start.
Suarez was the only driver to crack the 180 mph barrier in the final round, after a lap of 49.929 seconds (180.256 mph) made the Mexico City, Mexico native the ninth foreign-born driver to win a pole in NASCAR’s second-highest series.
“It means a lot,” Suarez said of winning his first pole at Daytona. “To be honest, I can’t really put into words what I’m feeling right now. We knew that we had a fast car in the draft, but we didn’t know what to expect in the single car runs. [As it turned out], the car was as fast or even better than it was in practice, so I’m really happy. It was a great run.”
The qualifying session was the first to utilize single car runs at Daytona since 2013, after calls for change in the wake of the multi-car crash that Suarez was involved in during Speedweeks were met with an updated format in March.
In both rounds of qualifying, Richard Childress Racing’s Brian Scott was second to Suarez on the speed charts. Scott’s lap of 50.048 seconds (179.827 mph) was just over a tenth shy of the pole time, leaving the NXS veteran disappointed in spite of a front row starting spot for Saturday night’s Subway Firecracker 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN).
“We’ve gotten good qualifying positions down,” Scott quipped after his final run. “I think we’ve qualified eight times in the top three this year and we’ve yet to get a pole. Frustrating, but still, second is [a] great qualifying [effort] here at Daytona. Really proud of my guys. It’ll be a perfectly good qualifying spot to kick off this Fourth of July evening and we’ll see what we can do in race trim.”
David Ragan, driving the No. 20 Interstate Batteries Toyota as a JGR teammate to Suarez, was third overall (50.140/179.497) in preparation for his first XFINITY start since Atlanta in 2014.
Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano (50.164/179.412) and 19-year-old standout Erik Jones (50.193/179.308) rounded out the top five. Jones’ lap gave JGR three of the front five starting spots on the grid.
Brothers Ty and Austin Dillon, February Daytona winner Ryan Reed, Brendan Gaughan and Elliott Sadler rounded out the top ten on the scoring pylon, with reigning series champion Chase Elliott and Scott Lagasse Jr. also advancing to the final round of knockout qualifying.
Series points leader Chris Buescher was bumped out by Ragan, who was the last car to take time in round one. Buescher missed the cut by two one-thousandths (0.002) of a second and will start 13th on the grid.
“Who knows?” Buescher said when asked what the difference in advancing might have been on his run. “It could have been the breeze, the weather the way it was at the time, or I could have moved the wheel too much. It’s a matter of little bits [in qualifying] here.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes, but it was a lot less stressful XFINITY qualifying session here than what we’ve had in the past [two years] and I’m okay with that.”
Other notables who failed to advance to the final round of qualifying included Darrell Wallace Jr. (14th), former Daytona winner Regan Smith (15th), and Sprint Cup regulars Aric Almirola (19th) and Kasey Kahne (21st).
“We got everything we could out of the car on our run,” Kahne said. “It drafts better than we qualified — I could close up that last three feet to get to someone’s bumper really well in practice — so we’ll just see what happens.”
44 cars attempted to qualify for the 40-car starting grid, leaving Derrike Cope, Derek White, Jeff Green and Chris Cockrum as the four cars who failed to qualify for Saturday night’s event.
The Subway Firecracker 250 takes the green flag at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, with live coverage on NBCSN, the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90. The telecast is NBC’s first live NASCAR race telecast since 2006, and its first telecast of NASCAR’s second-highest series since November of 2006 at Phoenix International Raceway.
RESULTS: NASCAR XFINITY Series; Coors Light Pole Qualifying; Daytona International Speedway; July 4, 2015
- Daniel Suarez
- Brian Scott
- David Ragan
- Joey Logano
- Erik Jones
- Ty Dillon
- Austin Dillon
- Ryan Reed
- Brendan Gaughan
- Elliott Sadler
- Chase Elliott
- Scott Lagasse Jr.
- Chris Buescher
- Darrell Wallace Jr.
- Regan Smith
- Brennan Poole
- Dakoda Armstrong
- Timmy Hill
- Aric Almirola
- Benny Gordon
- Kasey Kahne
- Blake Koch
- John Wes Townley
- Landon Cassill
- David Starr
- Bobby Gerhart
- Dexter Bean
- J.J. Yeley
- Morgan Shepherd
- Martin Roy
- Mike Harmon
- Mark Thompson
- Ryan Sieg
- Ross Chastain
- Harrison Rhodes
- Jeremy Clements
- Cale Conley
- Joey Gase
- Eric McClure
- Peyton Sellers
DNQ: Derrike Cope, Derek White, Jeff Green, Chris Cockrum
