Martin Truex Jr. won the pole and his Furniture Row Racing teammate Erik Jones qualified 10th for Sunday’s Apache Warrior 400 at Dover International Speedway.
Truex drove the No. 78 Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota on Friday to a final-round lap of 22.407 seconds at 160.664 mph on the high-banked 1-mile concrete oval. He was 17th in the first round and seventh in the second round.
It was the second pole and 24th top-10 start of the season for Truex, the playoff point leader. It’s also his 14th career pole and third at Dover.
“It’s awesome to get the pole,” said Truex. “We kept on working on the car all day and put it together when it counted. My timing was off the first two rounds, but came close to having a flawless run in the final round. It wasn’t perfect, but it got us the pole and No. 1 pit stall for Sunday. We’ll work on our race trim package tomorrow and get the Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota dialed in for the race. This is my home track and I love racing here.”
Jones’ pole-round lap in the No. 77 SiriusXM Toyota was 22.622 at 159.137. He was ninth in the first round and 11th in the second. He will line up on the outside of Row 5 for Sunday’s 400-lap, 400-mile race.
“We struggled the first two rounds getting a decent balance and then, when we got it off the splitter, it was a little bit different than what we had in the first two,” said Jones. “We just struggled all day in qualifying trim. We couldn’t find the balance we needed. We’ll work hard on race trim tomorrow but it was still a top-10 starting spot so it’s somewhere good to work from.”
The balance of the top 12 qualifiers were: Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, Matt Kenseth, Daniel Suarez, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ryan Newman, Kevin Harvick, Jones, Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott.
The Apache Warrior 400 will air live Sunday beginning at noon MT (2 p.m. ET) on NBCSN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and MRN.
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