MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
AAA 400 DRIVE FOR AUTISM
DOVER INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
JUNE 2, 2017
KYLE LARSON POSTS TOP FIVE QUALIFYING EFFORT FOR CHEVROLET AT DOVER
Three Team Chevy Drivers in Final Round
DOVER, Del. (June 2, 2017) – Kyle Larson made a strong showing at Dover International Speedway today by qualifying his No. 42 Target Chevrolet SS in fifth place for Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race. Larson ran a fast speed of 158.179 mph around the famed Monster Mile track.
High on the heels of his Coca-Cola 600 victory at Charlotte last weekend, Austin Dillon qualified his No. 3 AAA Chevy SS ninth in the challenging knockout-style format. Dale Earnhardt Jr. also transferred to the final round in his No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet SS with an 11th place effort, giving Team Chevy three starting positions in the Top 12.
Dillon’s teammate, Ryan Newman, was the fastest qualifier in the second segment in his No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet SS and will start 13th. Jimmie Johnson, who has recorded 10 victories at Dover International Speedway, qualified 14th in the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevy SS. Chase Elliott was 16th in his No. 24 NAPA Chevrolet SS for the 300-lap event.
Kyle Busch (Toyota) won the pole, Martin Truex Jr. (Toyota) qualified second, Daniel Suarez (Toyota) was third, and Matt Kenseth (Ford) qualified fourth.
The AAA 400 Drive for Autism is scheduled to begin on Sunday, June 4th at 1 pm, ET. Live coverage can be found on FoxSports1, MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
POST QUALIFYING QUOTES:
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 5th
ON HIS QUALIFYING ROUNDS:
“We were really good in practice and I didn’t feel very good that first run, but we still weren’t really fast and my front-end was just working way too good. Landing in the corner it was kind of getting me upset and the final round it got better, but our exit was too tight. I couldn’t carry a lot of speed off Turn 4. I ended up fifth, but would have liked to have been on the pole.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AAA CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 9th
ON HIS QUALIFYING EFFORT:
“That is our best qualifying effort of the year right there. So, very proud of these guys, the AAA team, Justin (Alexander, crew chief). Things are clicking the momentum is good and it’s what you want to see. You want to see us perform like that at every track. Hard to make the third round in this deal and to make the third round for us, that was big.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 11th
ON NOT RUNNING THE PHILADELPHIA EAGLES PAINT SCHEME NEXT WEEKEND AT POCONO:
“I was disappointed because the opportunity to honor the teachers was going to be pretty cool learning about that connection that the Eagles have with that was going to be col. We are still going to have some teachers at the race and some of the Eagles guys are going to come out. Everything is kind of as is, except for the car.
“I do like the Axalta car we are going to run. It’s going to look good out there and it’s really just unfortunate for Axalta and a good cross over promotion. That would be pretty cool even though obviously, we joked around being Redskins fan and all that. But, it was going to be a pretty fun promotion and we are still going to try to maximize what opportunity we can with it.”
DID YOU JUST FIND OUT?
“I just found out recently in the last couple of days.”
ON HIS QUALIFYING EFFORT:
“Real excited actually. We went to the simulator which is something we’ve been trying to infuse into our process a little bit more. It’s been bearing some fruit and helping us out and making us feel more confidence going into the race weekends. We first really experienced that in Kansas and had a great practice the first day. Same thing here, we went to the simulator, picked a few things we liked, threw out some stuff that didn’t work. And what that really does and why that is important is because we come to the race track and we unload and there is obviously going to be some comments about the car that we want to fix. We know what not to mess with that is going to waste a lot of practice time and we can just hit the things that we thought we liked in the sim. They correlated really well today. We got the car better in race trim. We only made one change and then swapped over really quick. Then for qualifying we improved the car each run and we were going to do okay today. We just ran one too many laps trying to go out there and make sure we made it into the third round. We should have just sat on pit road and not ran a second time in the second round. If we get bumped out that’s just the breaks. We should have saved our lap. That lap on the tires, we ran an .86 and that would have qualified us in the top 10, top 8. So, we had a little too much time on our tires and it cost us. The car was building tight, but I’m really happy. We have been working, trying to get better. Charlotte was not a fun experience for us. But we did come out of Kansas with a lot of confidence and were really happy about the car there and back here at Dover and feel good about the car. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. We still have some things to continue to put into the race set-up that we think can help and we will see how that works. We are definitely still leaning on our teammates, our set-ups are really similar so we can communicate and work off of each other and that seemed to work really well for both of us, at least for me in Charlotte.”
ARE YOU WORKING WITH ALEX BOWMAN AT THE SIMULATOR?
“Alex is definitely in there. Alex is in there pretty much every day. Basically, he drives the sim to develop the sim and get it ready for the drivers. He gets it close to where the teams can go in there and actually use it as a tool. We simulate practice, we go in there and say ‘alright hit the track this is your baseline set-up, we are going to make one change at a time, tell us what you are feeling.’ We check off some stuff and we throw some of it, we push other stuff off to the side that doesn’t feel good. That saves us a lot of headache at the track when we are practicing because you only have such a limited amount of time to practice and we don’t need to be making changes that aren’t going to help the car. And you can find that out on the sim. We found a couple of things that we really liked. We tried them today. They did exactly what they did in the sim. So, it’s cool that is a nice tool for us and I think it’s something for the future for many years to come.”
RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 13th
WAS THAT A MOVING TARGET, ROUND 1 TO ROUND 2?
“Not a moving target. We just don’t have enough speed in our Caterpillar Chevrolet. We were good enough to be 13th and it was really close, but we still need to get three-tenths to be at the top of the board, and that’s what our goal is. It’s disappointing. My average qualifying spot here is like 10th. We lost a little bit on that today. We’ve got some work to do to make it better and make it drive better and make it stick better.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 14th
WHERE WOULD YOU RANK TODAY’S EFFORT?
“Today was pretty challenging in the practice session trying to find the right balance. Just got off a little there. We got it closer for qualifying here, but just not enough speed to transfer. We are trying. Qualifying is very important to us. We are very aware of that. It is just not suiting us this year. This is my favorite track and I know come race time we will be just fine.”
DID YOU DO ANY RACE TRIM RUNS TODAY?
“No, we were just on qualifying trim. We are making a huge effort to improve that. Just haven’t found what we need yet.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA CHEVROLET SS – Qualified 16th
WHAT WAS DIFFERENT BETWEEN THE CAR FROM THE FIRST ROUND AND SECOND ROUND IN QUALIFYING?
“Real similar just kind of fought the same thing in both. Just didn’t hit a good enough lap to get through so we will go to work on it tomorrow and get ready for 400 laps Sunday.”
WHAT SPECIFICALLY WAS THE ISSUE ON THE CAR? WHAT WERE YOU FIGHTING?
“We were just fighting some issues getting into (Turn) 3. I didn’t feel like I could hold my line on the bottom like I felt like I needed to. I’m not sure if it is something I could do a little better or something we can do to the car, but none the less it wasn’t good enough to move on, so we will go get ‘em on Sunday.”