A 21.722-second/124.298 mph lap in the third and final round of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Richmond Raceway on Friday was fast enough to give Kevin Harvick the provisional pole for Saturday night’s Toyota Owners 400. Qualifying results from Friday remain unofficial, as cars won’t be inspected until Saturday afternoon.
If Harvick’s time stands, the Richmond pole will be his second pole of 2019, nine races into the season, making him the year’s first repeat pole winner.
“For me, all three rounds went really good,” Harvick said. “We had a good race practice for a 30-lap run, there, at the beginning of practice. Obviously, it rained out the second practice. They did a good job with the car, and I didn’t really know, but the second lap ended up being our fastest lap. I just over drove the car, probably, the second and third lap. The first lap was probably the smoothest lap for me. I felt like I needed to roll a little more speed and wound up rolling too much speed, and it wound up being too much brake. The cars had a little fall off from a time standpoint, and I think it was really just managing the fall-off and be consistent with the laps. Stickers were definitely faster in the first round than they were the second and third round.”
After posting the sixth-quickest lap time in the opening round, he moved up to second on the speed chart in round two.
Erik Jones qualified second in his Toyota to start alongside Harvick’s Ford on the front row. Kurt Busch’s Chevrolet was third in the final round of qualifying to give all three manufacturers representation in the top-three positions on the race starting grid.
“I thought it was three good runs,” Busch said. “The car had a good bit of rear grip to it, which has been our struggle, so I’m really happy that today’s practice run and the qualifying runs today showed us that the car’s got the grip level. Now, we just need to make sure the balance stays with it. We’re just trying to be more consistent and not have any weak areas, and I think the changes they made, we’re trying to adjust to the weaker areas. So that should help us.”
Busch was fastest in the opening round of qualifying when he posted a 21.460-second/125.815 mph lap, the fastest, overall, lap of the three-round session.
That first round of qualifying, as well as the second round, were slashed in half by NASCAR, time-wise, at Richmond, as the sanctioning body cut the time of each of the first two rounds from 10 minutes to five minutes each.
“It was really just more congestion,” Harvick said. “I think when you come to a place like this with everyone running three or four laps, it is hard to get 40 cars going in the first round, or however many cars are here, 35 or 40 or whatever it is. To get those cars to run three or four laps, you run into traffic ,and it becomes more congested than it probably needs to be in the first round. The second and third rounds were fine.”
Busch’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Kyle Larson, headed into Friday evening’s qualifying session as the fastest from the day’s only practice session. He followed that up with a first-round lap second only to his teammate. But in the second round, Larson wound up 14th, failing to advance to the final round of qualifying.
“I just felt tighter each run or each lap, and then the second round there, I was just a little too tight in the center to roll speed. So I had the feeling I’d be that way once the track got some rubber, and sure enough, we were just a little too tight,” Larson said.
The second round of qualifying was led by Busch’s younger brother, Kyle Busch, with a 21.640-second/124.769 mph lap. The younger Busch wound up fifth on the starting grid.
Joey Logano qualified fourth.
