Brian Scott finished 12th and was the highest finishing Richard Childress Racing driver at Darlington Raceway. Brendan Gaughan finished 13th, Ty Dillon 15th and Paul Menard was 25th.
A strong No. 60 AdvoCare Ford Mustang and a great pit call by crew chief Scott Graves earned Chris Buescher a top-five finish in Saturday afternoon’s NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Darlington Raceway. With his 11th top-five finish of the 2015 season, Buescher extends his points lead to 29 over second-place.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 60 AdvoCare Ford Mustang – Finished 5th “We got it turned around here. A race like this is the reason this is my favorite place. I love this race track. It did exactly what we thought it would in the heat of the day."
Bubba Wallace, driver of the No. 6 Scotchman/Coca-Cola Ford Mustang, earned a 14th-place finish on Saturday afternoon in the NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Darlington Raceway.
Kurt Busch led the way for Team Chevy in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifications at Darlington Raceway for the 66th running of the Bojangles’ Southern 500. Busch posted a quick time of 27.691-seconds/177.588 mph in his No. 41 Haas Automation Chevrolet SS to earn the outside pole position for the 367-lap race. It is the 11th top 10-start for Busch this season and his ninth top-10 start at the 1.366-mile track.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – Qualified 1st “We had a really good Miller High Life Ford and Paul Wolfe made good adjustments each round. The track was changing and the car was falling off as the tires were falling off and it is hot so the track was hard to get ahold of but the car is fast and my team did a great job."
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Crispy Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing - Starting Position: 10th - How was your backup car during the qualifying session? “Really proud of my M&M’s Crispy Toyota team for getting this backup car ready and in good enough shape to qualify in the top-10. We’ll have some more adjustments to make during the race tomorrow, but I feel confident we can get things figured out pretty quickly once the green flag drops.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 BUDWEISER/JIMMY JOHN’S CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 3RD - WHAT WAS YOUR CAR LACKING TODAY? “We were fairly good in the first two rounds. I felt like I could have pushed harder in those two rounds to go faster; and that last round, we just kind of missed the balance on our Budweiser/Jimmy John’s Chevy."
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – Qualified 4th - “We were in the ballpark. I think all the Team Penske cars were pretty fast. I am proud of everybody there. Brad obviously laid down a good one there at the end. He never slowed down ever and everyone else was slowing down each lap. It was interesting to see that. We were just a little free all of qualifying there. We just never jumped the fence with it.”
Crew chief Patrick Donahue, car chief Dillon Bassett and engineer Morgan Olsen have been barred for the next four O'Reilly events due to fallen ballast from Patrick Staropoli's No. 48 entry during this past weekend's event at Sin City.
Hendrick Motorsports enters this weekend's NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington Raceway as the facility's all-time leader in wins (16), top fives (58), top 10s (97) and laps led (4,269).
As good as a season-opening win in Gainesville felt for Matt Hartford, a repeat of that at his home track during this weekend’s FMP NHRA Arizona Nationals presented by NGK Spark Plugs