Erik Jones qualified fourth and his Furniture Row Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. qualified seventh for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Jones, in the No. 77 Sport Clips Toyota, made a pole-round lap of 26.956 seconds at 200.326 mph on the 1.5-mile tri-oval. He will line up on the outside of Row 2 next to Kevin Harvick.
“I just never could quite figure out Turn 1,” said Jones. “Never felt like I got through there very good and then we made up a lot of our time through (turns) three and four, but not enough obviously to supplement the pole. Fourth, though, is a good starting spot. You know track position has been really important here, especially in the spring, so we’ll start there and hopefully have a good Sport Clips Toyota Camry tomorrow.”
Truex, in the No. 78 Bass Pro Shops/TRACKER Boats Toyota, made a pole-round lap of 27.077 at 199.431. He will line up on the inside of Row 4 next to Ryan Blaney.
“We were just a little too tight,” said Truex. “We’ve been pretty fast all day, but we just couldn’t get through the corners and we’ve been kind of struggling in turns one and two and that’s what kind of got us during qualifying. Just missed it a little bit, but we qualified seventh here last time too and we were really disappointed in that, but we raced really well. We’ll get out there tomorrow and get this Bass Pro Shops/TRACKER Boats Camry tuned up.”
Kurt Busch won the pole position. The balance of the top-12 qualifiers were Denny Hamlin, Harvick, Jones, Kyle Busch, Daniel Suarez, Truex, Blaney, Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 will air live beginning at noon MT (1 p.m. local) on NBCSN, Sirius XM Channel 90 and PRN Radio.