News: Watkins Glen Qualifying Summary
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series traveled to Watkins Glen, New York this week for another different track view, the 11-turn and 2.45-mile historic road course of Watkins Glen International. During two practice sessions on Saturday morning, the No. 20 DeWalt Camry paced the field with top-10 fastest speeds and driver Erik Jones felt good about his strong Toyota Camry. When the qualifying session ensued Saturday night Jones was poised for a good lap, when an on-track incident caused a blown tire and forced the team to obtain assistance from NASCAR to travel the 20 car back to pit road. The team changed the blown tire and the driver returned to his car for another timed-lap attempt at moving into the final qualifying round. The DeWalt Camry scored in the 14th position, a row-seven start for the Sunday main event. After qualifying Jones commented about the incident, "I just missed my mark there. I just got in too hot and locked the right-front up enough that it blew it out. That’s not what you want to do. I kind of thought we were done and I didn’t realize that the rule was that if you don’t complete a lap you get to come back in and change tires. We put another tire on it and the DeWalt Camry had good speed. I was just a little conservative on my lap, which I think you can probably understand why after the first time. Still a good starting spot. It has more speed than that so it’s frustrating in that way, but still nice that we’re starting off better than dead last where we thought we were going to be.” The GoBowling.com race will begin Sunday at 3:00 pm ET and will be broadcast on NBCSN.
