Marcos Ambrose prevailed during wet conditions to win Saturday’s qualifying for the NAPA Auto Parts 200 Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Ambrose turned a lap at the 2.71-mile, 14-turn street course at 80.905 m.p.h. in his No.47 JTG/Daugherty Racing Toyota for his second career Nationwide pole. His first pole came in October 2007 at Memphis.
The Aussie won the Nationwide road course event at Watkins Glen, NY earlier this month. He finished third in last year’s race at Montreal.
Carl Edwards will start alongside Ambrose after securing the outside pole at 80.116 m.p.h. MiamiHerald.com
Ron Fellows (79.717 mph), last year’s race winner, qualified third, followed by Boris Said (78.902 mph) and Brad Coleman (78.837 mph). Jacques Villeneuve, Justin Marks, Antonio Perez, Andrew Ranger and Paul Menard will start from positions six through 10, respectively.
Said, however, will start from the rear of the field after blowing an engine during his qualifying run. NASCAR
Earlier, Ambrose, his first career start in the Grand-Am Rolex Series ended before the green flag waved when he ran off the course on the warm-up lap on cold tires and slammed a barrier in the No. 77 Ford Daytona Prototype for Doran Racing. That forced Edwards and his driving partner, Ambrose, to watch the entire race as they finished last. Detroit Free Press
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Napa Auto Parts 200 - Race Line-Up
“Can you believe it?” Ambrose said. “We go in the sports-car race, and it ends so badly for us, and then we come out and lock the front row for the Nationwide race. It may be karma—I don’t know. I just feel really badly for Kevin Doran and the whole team there, because we destroyed that car for them. ... But we’ve gone from zero to hero.”
Edwards acknowledged that Dumoulin might have cost him the pole, but considering the events earlier in the day, Edwards was fine with the outcome.
“[Saturday] did not start out well,” Edwards said. “Marcos Ambrose and Kevin Doran and all the guys put together a great Daytona Prototype car, and we worked really hard on it, and I put it in the fence before the race even started.
“So it’s kind of fitting. I would have loved to have been on the pole [Saturday], but I took Marcos’ opportunity to race—at all—in that race. He had his suit on and everything. He looked like the kid who woke up on the 24th of December and thought it was Christmas and found out it wasn’t.
“He got the pole, and it probably worked out well. ... I owed him one—but now we’re even.” NASCAR
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