Qualified: No. 8 (lane choice)
The Competition: No. 9 Scott Palmer
The Results:
Q1: 4.178 E.T. at 230.33 MPH
Q2: 4.081 E.T. at 248.07 MPH
Q3: 3.887 E.T. at 316.82 MPH
Q4: 3.856 E.T. at 318.47 MPH
Quotable:
“I can tell you one thing, that our Matco Tools/U.S. Army/Toyota/Pennzoil team, we’ve just been making strides. We came here with a completely new engine combination we’ve been running since Norwalk. It took us some runs to where we could get it to not drop holes, like we did yesterday. It’s a credit to our team where, as you can see, we’re just getting better and better every lap. And, we made a big, wholesale change between Q3 and Q4 because we wanted to move up, but it only got us halfway where we wanted to be. We wanted to run an 80 flat, a 79. But we know where we’re at, we made a good jump, and tomorrow the conditions are going to fall right where need them to be. I think an 85 is a run we’ll be able to make tomorrow in the heat of the day and be really competitive all day long. So we’re feeling really confident going into race day tomorrow. We’ll go out there and do what we do and have fun doing it. We’re ready to do some work tomorrow.”