Qualified: No. 11
The Competition: No. 6 Tony Schumacher
The Results:
Q1: 4.022 E.T. at 239.14 MPH
Q2: 4.882 E.T. at 148.46 MPH
Q3: 3.785 E.T. at 326.40 MPH
Q4: 6.314 E.T. at 106.22 MPH
Quotable:
“The good thing is that we started the day with a good run down the track. We had some gremlins in the car in Dallas and they showed up here yesterday, which made for a frustrating qualifying day. Today, the Matco Tools ‘Tools for the Cause’/U.S. Army boys went to work. They had that no-quit attitude and stripped the car down last night and replaced everything with new stuff and made a few changes. We were able to make a nice lap down the track and give us something to work with. It moved us up in the field and allowed us to take a shot at the No. 1 spot in Q4. We just got a little bit overly aggressive. The good thing is that everything did exactly what it wanted to. We’ve got a lot of confidence going into tomorrow. To have the confidence that our car is capable of a run in the 3.68 or 3.69 (seconds) area is something we haven’t had for a while. Now we can back it down and try to run somewhere in the low 3.70s and we’re going to need it. We’re facing Tony (Schumacher) and the U.S. Army team and they have been running low 3.70s all weekend every lap, which is phenomenal. I just hate that we have to race first round, but we are going to go out and give it all we got and leave it all out there.”