At the end of Sprint Cup Series qualifying at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Jeff Gordon would score the pole award for the Kobalt 400. It marks his 79th career, and his second pole in three races thus far this season. Gordon’s lap of 27.738 seconds is a track record, and his first pole at Las Vegas.
“I didn’t come off the throttle, if much,” Gordon commented. “I knew I had to flip it the tiniest bit. The lap before in the previous session, I was a little conservative. Hearing the lap times, I knew that I had to be fully committed if I wanted to run for the pole. That was fun. What an awesome 3M Chevrolet. What a turnaround from last week. I’m just so proud of this team for keeping their heads up, and this is a great way to start off Las Vegas.”
Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano kept his solid season rolling as he will start second on Sunday.
“This Ford has a lot of speed,” Logano said. “It didn’t in race trim, then we switched to qualifying trim and it just came to life. I didn’t lift a lot and Jeff just laid down a really good lap. I don’t know if there’s a way that I could beat that lap.”
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kasey Kahne and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were third and fourth, respectively, followed by Kyle Larson.
“It got a whole lot better so happy about that,” Earnhardt commented. “We had a challenge getting through the bumps in practice. Greg and Kevin got together and made some adjustments, and man, that was fun to drive. Hopefully it marks a turn in our qualifying as it makes it a whole lot easier starting near the front.”
Matt Kenseth was sixth quickest, followed by Ryan Newman, Martin Truex Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Jamie McMurray, Brad Keselowski and Tony Stewart.
“It’s really fun to be able to run that quick around here and almost run wide open,” McMurray said. “Through one and two, I held it down there – pulling on the wheel to keep it held down wide open. I thought because it was tight in one and two that it’d be tight at the other end, but it was actually loose. I’m disappointed that we’ll start 10th, but glad that we have a car. This organization has come so far in the past year. We ended off last year strong and you never know going into a new year whether you’ll have that speed so it’s good to be quick still.”
David Ragan was 13th, followed by Carl Edwards, Aric Almirola, Greg Biffle, Casey Mears, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer, Danica Patrick, A.J. Allmendinger, Brian Scott and Paul Menard. Austin Dillon just missed the cut of making the top 24, followed by Justin Allgaier, Alex Bowman, Brian Vickers, Sam Hornish Jr., Ryan Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Michael McDowell.
“It was alright. Just got tight the second one,” Dillon commented. “Speeds picked up a lot from practice and I wasn’t expecting that. If I would’ve known that, I would’ve gotten more out of it the first run.”
Reed Sorenson, Mike Bliss, Travis Kvapil, Mike Wallace and Matt Benedetto failed to qualify.
The big story at Atlanta Motor Speedway was the issues with technical inspection. That seems to be the story again at Las Vegas as teams are once again running into issues. All of the drivers were through qualifying inspection before the session started, except for J.J. Yeley. However, Yeley was able to get through as the session started.
Brad Keselowski had gotten through inspection, though was pulled back to inspection as the session got started. Matt Yocum reported on FOX Sports 1 that Kerry Tharp, NASCAR’s Communications Officer, told him an official saw a crew member off of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford team messing with a fender. Keselowski would go back through qualifying, getting back out to the track and set to qualify with about nine minutes left on the clock for round one.
Last weekend, technical inspection issues at Atlanta Motor Speedway caused 13 drivers – highlighted by Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, Regan Smith, Tony Stewart – to miss qualifying as a result of not getting through pre-qualifying technical inspection in time. When it came to race time, the race scheduled to start at 1:16 pm EST, would start at 2:13 pm EST due to rain.If the race had started on time, though, there would have been drivers that would’ve missed the start of the race. AJ Allmendinger, Jeff Gordon, Greg Biffle, JJ Yeley, Josh Wise and Kevin Harvick were still going through inspection. By the time the race started, though, all of the drivers were through inspection.
As a result, NASCAR announced on Thursday, March 5th an adjustment to the opening day schedules for Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway as a result of issues with pre-qualifying inspection a week ago. Sprint Cup Series practice was scheduled to last an hour and 25 minutes, but now will last an hour and 15 minutes, while qualifying for the three events will take place five minutes later. As a result, it would allow 15 more minutes of time for teams to get ready for inspection and for officials to get the cars through inspection.
Based on how Friday afternoon went at Las Vegas, the change looks to have paid off.
