For the second race in a row Australian Shane Tucker took advantage of solid conditions on the first day of qualifying to put his Auzmet/StructGlass Camaro in position to qualify in the top half of the field. The Auzmet/StructGlass Chevrolet Camaro made two solid runs and will enter the second day of qualifying at the 20th annual DENSO Spark Plug Nationals as the provisional No. 12 qualifier.
In the first round of qualifying Tucker and his team posted the eleventh quickest run of the session. The Auzmet/StructGlass Camaro crossed the finish line 6.823 seconds later at 202.48 mph. He was just a few hundredths of a second behind Joey Grose who was the second Pro Stocker across the stripe. During the four-wide eliminations on Sunday drivers just need to be one of the first two cars across the finish line to advance to the next round.
The Friday results have Tucker in a positive frame of mind going into Saturday’s final day of qualifying and then into race day on Sunday.
“Just making two more full runs that we are happy with is a great way to start the Las Vegas race,” said Tucker. “We are really glad to get some more good data to move forward with into tomorrow. The Four-Wide Nationals are always a bit of a tricky one for the driver because you don’t want to make a mistake and waste a run. Tomorrow we will look to make two more good runs and go into race day with four decent runs.”
In the final session Rob Tucker, Shane’s father and crew chief, tuned up Shane to an improved elapsed time with a run of 6.732 seconds at 203.80 mph. The positive improvement continued a trend the team has exhibited recently. They are steadily improving with every run during qualifying. Three weeks ago at the Gatornationals the team stepped up every pass in qualifying and then raced to a quarterfinal finish.
Tony Fay Public Relations
