Final Practice Speeds | Second Practice Speeds
Alex Bowman and Martin Truex Jr. will each have to start at the rear of the field for Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course.
Bowman, who qualified second, crashed in the closing moments of final practice in Turn 4 and will go to a backup car. He heads into the race two points below the cutoff for the next round of the playoffs.
Truex had a bad shift in the final session in Turn 9, forcing the team to change the engine. He was fastest at the time with a lap of 102.009 mph.
“It’s going to be hard to start from the back and hate all the extra work from for my guys,” Truex said on the NBCSN broadcast. “I apologize to them. I’m not sure how it happened.
“I had one other issue today with a shift in the gate. I don’t know if it was just an issue that was right there on the edge and I just screwed it up a little bit that one time, but we’ll have to look at it a little bit further.”
Truex, who was slated to start eighth, has won the first two races of the playoffs and is already locked into the Round of 12.
“I mean stage points don’t really mean anything to us other than the stage wins do – bonus points,” Truex said. “We didn’t qualify well here last year. We found our way to the front. It’s going to be a lot about strategy and having a good car on the long runs. Hopefully we can do that and just pick them off one at a time and hopefully put ourselves in position towards the end.”
Jimmie Johnson also spun and damaged the rear of his No. 48 Chevrolet, but the team is working on repairing it.
