Brian Vickers picked up his Sprint Cup Series- leading fourth pole of the season after recording the quickest lap in Friday’s qualifying for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.
Vickers lapped the 1.99-mile, 12-turn road course at 93.678 m.p.h. (76.475 seconds) in his No.83 Red Bull Toyota. He also won the pole last weekend at Michigan.
“I just didn’t want to make any mistakes,” Vickers said. “When I finished the lap, I was kind of thinking it was a decent lap. I felt there was some corners that I could have gone faster.” MiamiHerald.com
Vickers said a variety of factors allowed him to gain significant speed during his qualifying run.
“It was a combination of a lot of things,” said Vickers, who is on the pole for a Cup race for the ninth time in his career. “We ran a lot more tape on the car, which does help. Some of it was the changes we made. We made a couple of changes that I think dramatically improved our forward drive off the corner.
Busch, who typically hates to settle for second in any racing endeavor, was upbeat in his post-qualifying interview session.
“It was a really good run for us,” Busch said. “I wasn’t expecting to run that great, but the car drove well. It really accelerated off the turns pretty well.”
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Infineon Raceway - Race Line-Up
Even though Busch felt he lost time through the final four turns, he was happy with the front-row starting position.
“It was still an awesome run for this whole team. All these guys worked so hard. We went and tested, just shook the car down. We feel like we made a lot of gains last year here and just kept those in the car for this year. We’re excited about qualifying second [Friday].” NASCAR.com
Marcos Ambrose qualified third to give Toyotas the top three qualifying spots.
Tony Stewart qualified fourth in a Chevrolet and was followed by Kasey Kahne in a Dodge. Martin Truex Jr. was sixth and was followed by Ryan Newman, Elliott Sadler, Boris Said and Matt Kenseth, who was the highest qualifying Ford.
Three-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson was 11th and rookie Joey Logano was 12th. Five-time Sonoma winner Jeff Gordon was 13th.
Juan Pablo Montoya, the 2007 race winner here, qualified 17th. The Associated Press
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