Story By: ANNE FORNORO / AJ FOYT RACING – LEBANON, TN – With less than sixty minutes of track practice at Nashville Superspeedway, Santino Ferrucci posted his second-best qualifying run of the year in the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet.
Ferrucci will start fifth in tomorrow’s race on the 1.33-mile banked oval after posting a two-lap run of 200.497mph. Ferrucci’s best run of the year (and his career) came three weeks ago in Portland, Ore. when he won the NTT P1 Award.
“Solid qualifying in the Sexton Properties Chevy,” said Ferrucci, who signed a contract this week to continue driving for AJ Foyt Racing. “Pretty awesome to start fifth and slide the top five already — we’ve been on a roll! I think our keeping the momentum going is just huge. Obviously, we were disappointed with the qualifying results in Milwaukee. We kind of knew what we did wrong, so to improve on that, come here and end up where we did was pretty awesome — and there’s still a little bit more left in it. So we’ll see how we do in the final practice and in the race.”
Ferrucci is coming off a pair of top-four finishes in the Hy-Vee doubleheader at the Milwaukee Mile where he qualified 19th in the first race and 12th in the second one over the Labor Day weekend.
Ferrucci was pumped about his most recent run, adding, “”It was a great run, I had to crack the throttle one time, which I was a little annoyed about, but more for precautions than anything else. We had a really good run going and we didn’t want to ruin it by hitting the wall.”
Sting Ray Robb suffered a mechanical issue which prevented him from completing his two-lap qualifying run. Robb was 19th in the first practice in his No. 41 Goodheart Chevrolet with a top speed of 196.184mph. His first lap in qualifying was over 200 mph. It would have been his best qualifying effort of the year. Instead, he will start 26th.
“We lost fuel pressure,” Robb revealed, adding, “We don’t know why yet but the car is obviously very good and I’m very, very disappointed to end the year’s last qualifying run like that because I think that we would have been running top-10 in no time.
“When you have to do that (start in the back) at a race like this where it’s going to probably be more single file it really matters how we start.”
The pole went to Kyle Kirkwood who qualified with a two-lap speed of 201.540mph. Josef Newgarden will start outside pole, followed by Felix Rosenqvist, Will Power and Ferrucci.
The race will be broadcast by NBC and streamed on Peacock Sunday afternoon starting at 3 p.m. ET.