Qualifying Results
• Kevin Harvick and the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Chevrolet SS team will start The Profit on CNBC 500 on Sunday from the 13th position after posting a lap time of 26.122 seconds and a speed of 137.815 mph in round one of NASCAR’s new multi-round qualifying format on Friday evening at Phoenix International Raceway.
• Harvick’s lap time was 0.001 seconds shy of the lap laid down by the 12th-place team in the 30-minute round one of qualifying. That put him outside of the top-12 drivers that made their way into the final 10-minute round of qualifying to determine the starting order of the top-12 cars.
• Brad Keselowski scored the pole award for Sunday’s race with a fast lap time of 25.828 seconds and a speed of 139.384 mph. Joey Logano, Jamie McMurray, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. complete the top-five starting positions for the race.
• Harvick’s team concentrated on race runs during Friday’s 90-minute practice session. He completed a total of 33 laps and ended up 19th on the speed chart.
• NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams are scheduled for two additional practice sessions on Saturday at 9 a.m. MT/11 a.m. EST and noon MT/2 p.m. EST. FOX Sports 1 will provide live coverage of both.
Harvick on his Phoenix qualifying effort:
“We didn’t make any qualifying runs (in practice) so we just kind of missed the balance of the car on the first run out on the race track. We got it a lot better for the second run even with everything heated up. We just wanted to concentrate on race (trim today) and feel really good about our race stuff.”