Austin Dillon avoids mistakes to capture pole for Auto Club 400 Sprint Cup race in Fontana

FONTANA >> As he zoomed down the backstretch at Auto Club Speedway Friday afteoon on the last round of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifying, Austin Dillon focused on winning the pole.

“It means everything. That is what I said down the backstretch,” the Richard Childress Racing driver said after the intense three-round session. “A Daytona 500 pole sitter, now I got a pole somewhere else.

“To do it at a drivers race track like this at Fontana it means a lot to me.  Just proud of this American Ethanol team; I knew going into that third session if I didn’t make mistakes, I would have a shot.”

As hard as it may be to believe, the last RCR pole was Dillon’s at the 2014 Daytona.

Dillon, grandson of the team owner and driving the No.3 Chevrolet, covered the two-mile distance in 38.200 seconds, a speed of 188.482 mph. He was able to edge out Kevn Harvick by 0.031 seconds.

Denny Hamlin, RCR teammate Ryan Newman and Carl Edwards made up the top five for Sunday’s Auto Club 400. Kyle Busch, Trevor Bayne, rookie Chase Elliott, Joey Logano and Jamie McMurray comprise the top 10. Hamlin was tops among Ford drivers and Bayne was the top Ford qualifier

Dillon was 14th in the first session at 38.413, which was led by 2015 event winner Brad Keseselowski at 38.200, Dillon moved to the third spot in the second session with a 38.209 runsthat trailed just Hamlin and Elliott among the top 24 from the initial session.

Hamlin’s 38.194 at 188.511 broke the track record of 188.245 set by teammate Kyle Busch in 2005.

“We’ve had fast cars all year long, and I knew going into that third session, if I didn’t make mistakes I would have a shot. I just stayed with it off of (Tu) 4. I kept my locker locked as much as I could with the gas just keeping as much fuel to the car as I could.  It worked out for us.”

Dillon’s efforts were the result of a strategy by team engineers.

“We wanted to be from 13th to 24th in that first (round),” Dillon said. “We were 13th (tied with Busch) on the front side of that.  On the second run I was a little tight. We just kept freeing the car up a little bit there to help ourselves in that third run and it all worked out.”

It was his best qualifying showing under the new NASCAR downforce rules.

“I figure everybody was going to have the same stuff as I’ve got and I’ve got to go out there and get better as a driver.  We went to work,” said Dillon, who will compete in his third Cup event at ACS. “I have always had this drive as a driver to want to get better and to work hard.  I think the right group of people is around me supporting me, showing me the right things to get better, pointing me in the right direction each time I come off the track somebody is talking to me on improving.

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“Also, my engineers are doing a good job of not being satisfied with just good. Good isn’t good enough.  That is making me a better driver.  I enjoy the encouragement and the push from those guys.”

Harvick was third and fourth in the first two sessions before finishing second.

Each round was a little bit different,” he said. “The second round, I had a little traffic getting onto the race track. The first round was pretty clean. I didn’t really change anything.

“I think I caught the inside of that seam with the right-side tires a little more than I wanted to through (tus) 1 and 2 and it just started to step out and I had to pedal it three or four times down there because it was loose.,” he said about the third-round effort.

“All in all, a good day for our team (Stewart-Haas Racing), and hopefully we can cap that off with a win when we get done on Sunday,” he said.

Hamlin was looking forward to the main event.

“We’ve run so well here; this is one of my top three tracks on the list that I haven’t won at that I really want to win at really bad,” said Hamlin, who missed the 2014 race due to an eye injury. “We’ll see how it all tus out, but I’m pretty confident.

“It was a pretty easy day for us. We didn’t have to change a whole lot. I was pretty happy with it, I just messed up a little bit on that final run and cost us a little bit of time. Other than that, not too bad.”

Bayne was the highest qualifier among the 11 Fords in te race, running for the Wood Brothers who have usually skipped this race.

“The cooler temperatures kind of threw our adjustments off a little bit.  It shaded up in three and four and I just got too loose on that last run,” he said. “ I think maybe if we kept it closer to what we did the second round on adjustments, we might have had a shot at the pole, but Austin laid down a really fast lap time for three rounds.

“To run a .20 after three runs on tires is pretty stout, but I can’t complain about a seventh-place starting spot.  It’s good to have track position here and now we’ve got to work on race trim.”