Martin Truex, Jr. equaled his best qualifying run of the season, second, and Furniture Row Racing teammate Erik Jones qualified eighth for Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism at Dover International Speedway.
Truex will start the race in the No. 78 Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota Camry on the outside of the front row and Jones will line up the No. 77 5-hour ENERGY Extra Strength Toyota Camry on the inside of Row 4.
Truex missed out on the pole position to Kyle Busch by a mere 11 one-thousandths-of-a-second with a third-round lap of 22.659 seconds at 158.877 mph. Busch ran at 22.648 at 158.94.
Truex’s second-round lap (22.748 at 158.256) was fifth fastest and he was second fastest in the first round with a lap of 22.665 at 158.835. It was his 10th top-10 qualifying effort in the first 13 races.
“You’ve got be aggressive at this place,” said Truex, a two-time winner at Dover. “You’ve got to charge and I just overcharged entry into (turn) three by a hair and lost a little time there. But all in all it was a good day for the Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota and excited to be here in Dover. Hopefully, we can continue with the way we’ve been running here the past few years.”
Jones ran a lap of 22.831 at 157.680 mph in the third and final qualifying session. He commented on the team radio after crossing the finish line that the handling of the No. 77 5-hour ENERGY Extra Strength Toyota Camry was tight in Turns 3 and 4. He was fourth in the second session (22.738 at 158.325) and eighth at the conclusion of the first (22.766 at 158.131). It was Jones’ fourth top-10 qualifying effort of the season.
“I didn’t think our lap was going to be good enough for the pole, but I thought we had a top-five starting spot,” said Jones. “The 5-hour ENERGY Toyota was really good getting through Turns 1 and 2 and then, in Turns 3 and 4, I tried to get a little bit more and got too tight. It is what it is. You try to get all you can and sometimes you get a little bit too much.”
Qualifying positions 3-12 went to Daniel Suarez, Matt Kenseth, Kyle Larson, Kurt Busch, Jones, Brad Keselowski, Austin Dillon, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism will air live beginning at 11 a.m. MT (1 p.m. ET) on Fox Sports 1, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio channel 90 and MRN.