NASCAR WCUP: Martin and Burton Qualify in the top half of the field for Roush
29 April 2000
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
First-round qualifying at California Speedway began shortly after 2:30
p.m. PDT amid partly cloudy skies, and all five Roush Racing drivers
circled the 2-mile oval in Fontana, Calif., with three cars locking into
the top 25, guaranteed of a starting spot in Sunday's race. Chad Little
was the 14th of 46 entries to qualify, Kevin Lepage 22nd, Mark Martin
25th, Jeff Burton 45th, and Matt Kenseth was the 46th competitor to make
his one lap of qualifying.
Chad Little, No. 97 John Deere Ford Taurus (45th quickest, 40.266 seconds): "Well, that's not what we wanted to accomplish today. I knew going into qualifying that we needed to pick up a half second from practice to have a good run. The John Deere Ford was running good entering Turn 1, but it started to get twitchy exiting Turn 2 and I lost the front end. I had to lift because the car got into the gray stuff, and I just didn't want to put it in the wall. This is a good car. We got a top-10 finish out of it at Atlanta early in the year, we just need to get it dialed into this track."
Kevin Lepage, No. 16 FamilyClick.com Ford Taurus (35th quickest, 39.430 seconds): "We're petty disappointed with that. We were 12th quickest in practice and we were expecting a good lap. It felt like it was going to be a good one, but the car bottomed out in Turn 2 and we gave up all of our speed there. We were the fastest in (Turns) 3 and 4 during practice so that makes it hard to take."
Mark Martin, No. 6 Eagle One/Cummins Ford Taurus (5th quickest, 38.817 seconds): "We made 15 runs this morning and didn't make any gains. We were as far back as 34th at one point and I was looking pretty sad. The last three runs we made, we picked up time. That was a spectacular lap. I really love my race car. We'll be able to see the front when the race starts on Sunday."
Jeff Burton, No. 99 Exide Batteries Ford Taurus (13th quickest, 39.019 seconds): "That's a good lap. That's a little slower than we ran practice, but most people did slow down. We were 20th in practice. We were seventh early in the day, but we lost a little bit and kept getting tighter and tighter. We saw that people got faster but we didn't, so we're happy with 13th.".
Matt Kenseth, No. 17 DEWALT Tools Ford Taurus (23rd quickest, 39.180 seconds): "That's not great based on how we practiced (13th). Twenty-third is good enough, though, for us to focus on race setup tomorrow. This track is so big and wide that starting where we are isn't going to hurt us like it might at other places."
Text provided by Kevin Radvany
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