Kevin Harvick was able to post a 29.914-second/180.517 lap in the third of three rounds of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday to claim the pole for Sunday's Pennzoil 400, a race he won last season.
Sunday's race will be the third of the 2019 Cup Series season but the first with all components of the new aerodynamic rules package, as the aero ducts that were absent from cars last weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway were added to the larger spoiler and splitter and tapered spacer for the Vegas race. The complete package resulted in drafting during Friday qualifying.
“The fastest car in qualifying trim is fourth [Austin Dillon],” Harvick said. "I told them before we qualified today that the fastest car would not get the pole today. In the final round it was going to come down to where you were at. It’s definitely different. It’s one of those situations where you don’t really know where you need to be. I had never drafted, really, in these cars."
Richard Childress Racing teammates Dillon and Daniel Hemric posted the fastest two laps when they worked together in the day's lone practice session. Their plans, though, fell apart in qualifying.
"I figured we had the fastest car,” Dillon said. "I hate that we couldn’t stick to our plan that we had beforehand. We knew we had the fastest cars, and we gave up a pole because of it. We just didn’t work together as a team as good as we needed to. I hate that, but we will hopefully learn from it, because I’m really proud of these guys. It sucks when you have the two fastest cars and you qualifying fourth and fifth with them. We had the pole; we thought that whoever was the fastest in the second round was going to run second, and we were just going to go. I didn’t think anybody had anything for us, but plans changed right before the end.”
The teammates did get the the final round of qualifying and wound up together on the starting grid, but in fourth and fifth, not on the front row.
Denny Hamlin will share the front row with Harvick on Sunday. Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch qualified third to share the second row with Hamlin.
The Hendrick Motorsports duo of Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott had the fastest laps in the final draft of the qualifying session, but they started their final laps too late for them to count. They wound up 11th and 12th, the final two positions determined in the final round of qualifying.
“TV said we did [make it in time], the flag said we did, their timer said we did, all of it said we did," Bowman said. "So it’s their sandbox, and we play in it. It’s wrong. They don’t give us an official clock to look at, because the official clock that they gave us, our lap counted.”
Dillon was fastest in the opening round of qualifying. Harvick, then, was tops in the second round. His 29.814-second/181.123 mph lap in round two was the fastest lap, overall, of the three rounds that made up the qualifying session.
