Dale Jarrett will start 43rd in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Auto Club 500 at California Speedway after being forced to use the champion's provisional during the qualifying session. A transmission failure in the #44 UPS Toyota Camry forced Jarrett to use the provisional for the second week in a row.
After a busy introductory week into the NASCAR Nextel Cup ranks last week in Daytona, the Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) teams of the #00, #44 and #55 looked to jump on the competition quickly this week to make up for lost ground. Unfortunately, all three teams struggled through the morning practice and into the afternoon qualifying session with handling and mechanical issues.
Due to the transmission failure of the #44 UPS Toyota Camry, Jarrett could not complete a lap during qualifying. He attempted twice to get his Toyota Camry up to speed, but Jarrett reported that the transmission would not shift out of first gear. The problem was evident during practice, as the team only ran six laps, with Jarrett being 40th fast on the speed chart.
"The transmission broke," said a dejected Jarrett. "We had a problem when we first went out in practice today where I had a hard time getting the car out of fourth gear. Then when we went out it didn't have second or third gear and then it felt like something was blocking fourth gear. It's certainly disappointing but we're in the race and have tomorrow to work on race setup. Definitely not what we wanted to do here today though."
Jarrett's teammates struggled during the morning practice as well. While they didn't have the same mechanical issues as Jarrett, Michael Waltrip and David Reutimann spent the session working on the handling of their Camrys and finished 33rd and 35th on the speed chart, respectively.
The #55 of Michael Waltrip made a few adjustments before qualifying and managed to pick up two-tenths of a second on their practice time to run a lap time of 39.50 seconds around the two-mile California Speedway. However, it was not fast enough to make the race, as the #00 of David Reutimann made up three-tenths of a second from his practice time to run a 39.47 second lap and bump his teammate out of the starting grid.
Front row of the 43-car field for Sunday's race will include polesitter Jeff Gordon with a qualifying time of 38.765 seconds and Kasey Kahne with an outside pole time of 38.810 seconds.
The Auto Club 500 is scheduled to start Sunday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. PST with FOX providing live television coverage.
