RPM’s Aric Almirola (25th), SHR’s Kurt Busch (26th), Hendrick’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. In 2011, it was Kevin Harvick that shot into the lead with one lap remaining for the win.
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FONTANA, Calif. – Expect the unexpected Sunday in the Auto Club 400, if qualifying for the 200-lap race is any indication. If you’ve been following along this season, you know we’ve predicted the victor in three of the four Nascar races. How will Auto Club’s wide track and seemingly endless racing grooves be suited for the lower-downforce rules package?
“I think there’s obviously a lot of notes that have been gathered and, from a driver’s standpoint, I think this is the race we’ve all been looking forward to the most, just because of the fact that you have some high speeds and lots of racing lanes and the cars are going to slide all over the place”, Harvick said.
“No, we love the seams”, last week’s Phoenix victor Harvick said.
Ryan Preece hopes to continue the fine start to his Xfinity Series rookie season in Saturday’s TreatMyClot.com 300 at Auto Club Speedway.
Dillon had a fast auto in Friday’s lone practice session, and was confident that he would have a shot at the pole. Yes, he loves the track and the track apparently seems to like him as well.
Jimmie Johnson leads the pack at Auto Club Speedway.
“You could write a book about a lap at this place”, said Carl Edwards, runner-up to Kevin Harvick by.
Last week’s victor at Phoenix is always very good at Phoenix. This model here, you enter into our compound, and each individual team will have a lot of different products. Turns 1 and 2, as many times as I’ve been here, I still don’t feel like I have it figured out.
“Of course I want to win it again, so we have to keep our heads down and stay focused as well”. When you hit this point in the race track and the auto moves and I can’t repeat it all of the time, so you never really know what you’re going to get. Last March, the No. 2 Ford driver closed from 18th to first in the closing laps, leading exclusively the last lap for the victory. I was pretty happy with it, I just messed up a little bit on that final run and cost us a little bit of time.
One of NASCAR’s minor-league series, the K&N Pro Series West, opens its season at the half-mile Irwindale Speedway on Saturday night with the Toyota/NAPA Auto Parts 150. But, if you paid attention to his races previous year with the Wood Brothers, Blaney normally had a fast auto that would run towards the front, but then not make it to the end of the race. “It worked out for us”. The fun is that you can actually change it. You can do things.
“This is a start, we have a long way to go”, said Dillon, after earning his second pole in 90 career Cup races.
Kyle Busch didn’t participate in last year’s event due to injuries so the defending Sprint Cup champion hasn’t seen Fontana in over a year. The driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet uses a data analyst who helps him with the minutiae of racing.
“I would like to say that California was one of the toughest racetracks that I had a year ago – for grip, it was fast, it was early in the season, and I didn’t have a lot of experience at that point”.
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Hendrick’s Jimmie Johnson will be disappointed to qualify in 19th which puts hims alongside JGR’s Matt Kenseth. “It was kind of nice because every session we were comfortably around the top ten”.
