Fords fly at Daytona; Biffle is on pole tonight
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ford found some extra power at one of NASCAR’s fastest tracks, and it was enough to put Greg Biffle on the pole for the first time in almost four years.
Biffle led a Ford contingent to a strong showing in qualifying at Daytona International Speedway to earn the top starting spot for tonight’s Sprint Cup Series race. He was one of seven Ford drivers to qualify in the top 14 at a track where Toyota used teamwork to win the Daytona 500 in February.
Biffle was the last car to make a lap in Friday night’s qualifying session and earned the top starting spot with a speed of 192.995 mph in his Roush Fenway Racing Ford.
It is Biffle’s first pole since October 2012 at Charlotte, a streak of 130 races, and he credited engine builder Doug Yates.
“I am not going to discredit winning a pole, but we would sure like to win an open race track,” Biffle said. “We have been really close with a couple outside front row starts and just haven’t quite gotten there. It does feel good for our team, though.”
Biffle bumped Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch from the top of the leaderboard. Edwards’ lap of 192.748 was good enough for second, while Busch dropped to third with a lap at 192.336. JGR had to scramble to ready Busch’s backup car for qualifying after he destroyed his Toyota during a crash in Friday morning’s practice session.
He had harsh words for Goodyear after the accident, which was caused by a cut tire. Busch complained he didn’t
have much confidence in Goodyear — Edwards also had a tire problem in the morning — but he had softened his stance by the end of the day.
“From my vantage point we’ve had a lot of tire issues this year. That’s probably four, five or six tires that we’ve blown this year,” Busch said. “We also did the tire test at Kentucky and didn’t necessarily have the best of results, I felt like. That’s where the frustration probably stemmed from and came from. Goodyear probably didn’t deserve what they got from me earlier today, but that’s just from earlier today.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. qualified fourth to give Roush two drivers in the top four.
“It is a good day for the Roush Fenway Fords,” Stenhouse said. “The guys
have been bringing really good cars to the speedways, really fast cars. It is really cool that Greg got it for our organization. It shows we are putting a lot of hard work in, and it is starting to pay off at every race track.”
Brad Keselowski qualified fifth in a Team Penske Ford, while teammate Joey Logano was 11th and Ryan Blaney was 12th for Wood Brothers Racing. Roush driver Trevor Bayne was 13th and Aric Almirola 14th for Richard
Petty Motorsports. All the Fords use engines built by Doug Yates.
“I am really happy to see a Ford on the pole with Greg Biffle and I think we will be ready to race,” Keselowski said. “It makes you feel really good to see all those Ford teammates up there in the front of the field.”
The Ford drivers will have to work together to fend off the Toyota brigade that ganged up on the field to win the season-opening Daytona 500.
JGR’s four drivers worked with Martin Truex Jr. to form a juggernaut that led to a Denny Hamlin win as Toyota drivers took four of the top five spots.
Edwards expected a similar strategy tonight.
“That worked really well,” Edwards said. “I don’t know that it will ever work that well again.
“I assume we’ll just try to do the same thing, which was basically work together if we can, and I watched a little bit of the race the other day and everything just worked out perfectly. If we can do that again, it would be great. We really have a good group of cars and we have a great group of teammates, so that would be good.”
Austin Dillon, who was involved in a horrible accident on the last lap of this race last year in which his car went airborne into the fence, qualified sixth as the fastest Chevrolet.