NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DUCK COMMANDER 500
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
APRIL 8, 2016
CHASE ELLIOTT POSTS SOLID QUALIFYING EFFORT AT TEXAS
Three Chevy SS Drivers in Top 10
FT. WORTH – (April 8, 2016) – Chase Elliott was the fastest NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) Rookie-of-the-Year contender in today’s qualifying session with a lap of 27.974 seconds, 193.036 mph in his No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet SS at Texas Motor Speedway. The Team Chevy driver will start fourth in the 40-car field in Sunday’s Duck Commander 500.
Austin Dillon, who was the pole-sitter at the recent NSCS race at Fontana, California, continued to have strong qualifying performances with a 10th place effort in his No. 3 Dow/Flexsolyt Chevy SS.
Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate and six-time winner at the 1.5-mile venue, Jimmie Johnson, will start 12th in his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS.
Carl Edwards (Toyota) was the pole winner, Joey Logano (Ford) qualified second, Martin Truex, Jr. (Toyota) qualified third, and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. (Ford) was fifth to round out the Top 5.
The action from Texas Motor Speedway will get underway at 7:30 pm EST on Saturday night April 9. Live coverage will be available on FOX, PRN Radio, Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and NASCAR.com.
QUALIFYING QUOTES:
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA AUTO PARTS CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 4TH
ON HIS QUALIFYING SESSION:
“I thought it was definitely an improvement. I’m really proud of the improvements we made from Round 1 all the way through Round 3. I’m very excited that we made the third round and was able to get a nice top five starting spot. The most important thing is getting our car driving good here later. This is a very valuable practice. A lot of night racing that you do, short track racing, or even a lot of the NASCAR stuff you practice during the day and race at night. I’m very glad we have this night practice session to get our car, at least you can get it consistent conditions for what you might see tomorrow night, hopefully. We need to make the most of this practice, try to get our car driving the best we can to be good tomorrow night. That is the most important thing. It’s nice to have a good starting spot, but the most important thing is to be good in the race.”
HOW MUCH DID THE WEATHER TODAY THROW YOU FOR A LOOP?
“I think for us, I was expecting that qualifying session to go a lot different than what it did because of qualifying late afternoon like that. I figured the sun was going to be on the track and it was going to be a lot slicker. It had a lot of grip and guys were still able to run really fast laps times, especially the guys that were first/second range they were moving pretty good. I didn’t expect that. I thought it was going to be more slick today, but like I said, proud of our NAPA group. It’s cool to be back in NAPA colors this week and looking forward to this practice later for sure to try to get a little better.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO START UP FRONT HERE AT TEXAS IN ORDER TO GET A GOOD TOP 10 FINISH?
“Well, we obviously want to do better than a top 10 finish. We want to be contenders and I think we have the team capable of doing that. For us, we recognize that having a good pit road selection is the biggest thing, starting good is nice, but I think that pit road selection is very important. You really have to have your car driving good. I think it’s going to be slick. Just because you start good doesn’t mean you are going to stay there. You have to work on your car in race trim to make it the best you can and hopefully try to move forward tomorrow night.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW/FLEXSOLYST CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 10TH
ON HIS QUALIFYING EFFORT:
“It was pretty good. We just tightened up too much that last run. I couldn’t get turned. We will learn for next time. It was good to get to the third round again and we will just keep working.”
BRIAN VICKERS, NO. TAXACT MILITARY FILES FREE CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 13TH
ON HIS QUALIFYING SESSION:
“Obviously, it was great to be up front contending for a pole. It’s days like this you wish it was the old format, where it was just one and done and we would have the pole. We just got too loose in the second session. We missed it or I missed it, one of the two. I went down in (Turns) 1 and 2 and the car jumped out from underneath me. I kind of wasn’t expecting it. I had a big correction and lost a lot of time. We made most of it back up down in (Turns) 3 and 4 and missed it by a thousandths of a second.”
GOOD NEWS IS YOU ARE FAST:
“Yeah, the good news is we have good speed in the car. It’s a special weekend having TaxAct on the car for a great cause. You obviously want to perform, you want to win. I want to sit on the pole, but we contended for it. It’s frustrating to miss the third round with something like that, but it happens. We are right on the edge with these cars and sometimes they get loose. I’m just glad it’s still in one piece. We have a great car going into the race.”
DID THE WEATHER THROW A CURVEBALL AT THE TEAM TODAY?
“Yeah, we were expecting it to be a lot sunnier today. We knew it was going to be maybe a little cooler, but a lot sunnier. We adjusted accordingly, although honestly we still got loose. It didn’t make the difference we needed.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 16TH
WHAT DID YOU STRUGGLE WITH THE MOST?
“We weren’t that far off. Half a tenth and we would have made the next round. The car wasn’t very close yesterday and we made a lot of changes last night. Me and (crew chief) Greg (Ives) were testing back and forth. The guys did a good job of really getting the car closer and I really liked the first run. We had a good lap there but; maybe a little bit too tight entering. We’ll just go back and check it out. I had to lift and use a little bit of brake in Turn 1, too; and that’s never good.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 20TH
WHERE DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU LOST A LITTLE BIT OF TIME THERE IN THE SECOND ROUND?
“Probably just being able to roll enough speed and get back to the throttle. I needed to get back to it sooner but I was just too tight. The Target Chevy was pretty tight yesterday in practice and we freed-up. We knew we had to free-up a lot for our scuff runs; but maybe we just didn’t go far enough. Or, maybe we got on the splitter trying to free it up, I’m not sure. But we were definitely too tight that second run and just couldn’t roll enough momentum and speed and so I qualified pretty bad. But we have a practice later tonight, so hopefully we can get it better in race trim. I was really loose in race trim yesterday, so if we can meet somewhere in the middle we’ll be pretty good.”
AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 KROGER/BUSH’S BEANS CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 23RD
ON HIS QUALIFYING EFFORT:
“The first run the car was pretty good. I probably actually under drove it. There is more grip on the race track than I thought. Made a small adjustment so right now it is one of those things that I think we are so close to the splitter right now that I don’t know if it got on it. Because it’s only (Turns) 1 and 2, in (Turns) 3 and 4 it is actually not too bad, but 1 and 2 is just tight. I’m not sure.”
PAUL MENARD, NO. 27 ROCKSTAR ENERGY/MENARDS CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 25TH
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN:
“We were in qualifying trim all day yesterday. Normally we don’t do that, so we were kind of behind the 8-ball a little bit in practice and qualifying kind of went the same way the practice did. Just really tight on landing, but I’m thankful we have another practice coming up to put it in race trim. We will be just fine.”