Photo Credit: Gary Buchanan/OnPitRoad
On Saturday afternoon at Dover International Speedway, Darrell Wallace Jr. would top the charts with a lap of 23,378 seconds to score his first pole of the 2015 season. It marks the second pole of his career in the XFINITY Series.
“I’m still shaking, hearts beating,” he commented. “When you start it up, you start holding your breath to hold it down to lay down a good lap. It feels good to start on the front row at Dover. Think we have a good mustang. Just have to be smart about it and have some fun.”
With his top-five finish at Charlotte, Wallace enters this weekend as one of the drivers with a shot at the $10,000 Dash for Cash bonus. He also rolls into the weekend with momentum following a sixth and fifth the past two weeks.
“My team is pumped up. I’m pumped up,” he added. “We’ve got all the confidence in the world after those two races. We feel good about this one – just have to make the most out of it.”
His Roush Fenway Racing teammate Chris Buescher will start second after timing in 0.016 seconds off of Wallace’s quick time on Saturday.
“Bubba has been doing a heckuva job so that’s pretty cool to be on the front row here,” he said. “We have some fast ford mustangs here. It’s going to be a good race. I felt good about the truck well and it held well on the long run which I feel will be important today.”
Buescher enters this weekend with confidence following a victory earlier this season, and a solid run at Dover last year.
“Scott and the guys have been working hard to build off of that run last year,” he added. “We knew whe ad a solid set-up – just had some areas that we wanted to work on. we have a car that I believe was better than last year so looking forward to getting this race started and getting one spot better than where we’re at.”
Matt Kenseth will start third ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Daniel Suarez and Richard Childress Racing’s Brian Scott.
“I think our Camry is really fast, its has good speed,” he commented. “I feel bad that I didn’t get the lap to put it on the pole. I feel like we have good speed, though. Looking forward to today. Hopefully I keep it up front and stay out of trouble today.”
Birthday boy Erik Jones will start sixth, ahead of Kasey Kahne, Austin Dillon, Ryan Blaney and Regan Smith. Brendan Gaughan and Ty Dillon rounded out the top-12.
“We just had to adjust a lot of after the first run to get the car the way we wanted it to be,” Smith summarized his session. “We made some good strings at it and improved on it so Jason and the guys did a good job from that standpoint. We’re going to have to continue adjusting as the day goes on with how the track is rubbing up so quickly with the sun peaking in and out of the clouds.”
Elliott Sadler qualified 13th just missing the final round of qualifying, followed by Chase Elliott, Jeremy Clements, John Wes Townley, Ryan Reed, Brennan Poole, Dakoda Armstrong, Ryan Sieg, Ross Chastain, Jamie Dick, JJ Yeley and David Starr.
