The #44 UPS team brought a new car to Chicagoland Speedway this weekend. But even the new car could not improve the team's chance to qualify for Sunday's race. Dale Jarrett failed to qualify his #44 UPS Toyota Camry into the field for Sunday's USG Sheetrock 400. With a lap time of 30.207 seconds and a speed of 178.767 mph, Jarrett qualified 42nd of 49 cars overall, but was 11th in the order of the 14 "go-or-go-home" cars.
The short schedule on Friday proved to be an up-and-down roller coaster ride for Jarrett and his team. During the 90-minute practice the team was able to improve substantially on the car's handling. As soon as it came off the truck, the new car was off the pace of the leaders by a large margin.
However, the team worked hard and made several adjustments that helped make up lots of time on the speed chart. By the end of the practice Jarrett was faster by more than a second than when they unloaded the car.
Challenges arose when the team finished preparing the car for qualifying and presented it to NASCAR for their pre-qualifying inspection. NASCAR found discrepancies in the measurements taken before practice, and then before qualifying, on the front nose of the car and the rear width. No clear explanation or reason could be found for the differences. However, the #44 crew was forced to scramble and make final compromises on the car in order to get clearance to make their qualifying run. Jarrett went out 12th in the order and had to wait nearly the entire balance of the qualifying session before learning that he would not be racing in Sunday's Nextel Cup race.
"I don't really know how to explain today," Jarrett said. "I just want to be able to get out there and race and bring UPS the attention they deserve. The car itself got better during practice. It not only showed with our speed, but the feel of the car improved. I think we just needed more front grip to be able to get off the corner a little quicker. We'll just use this extra weekend coming up to prepare as much as we can for Indianapolis."
Jarrett's MWR teammates found better results in Chicago. Reutimann qualified his #00 Toyota in 21st with a lap time of 29.900 seconds and a speed of 180.602 mph. Waltrip also showed some strength in his #55 Toyota with a qualifying lap of 29.971 seconds and speed of 180.174 mph to start Sunday's race in 28th.
The front row for Sunday's Nextel Cup race will include a couple of drivers not accustomed to starting up front. Casey Mears will start on the pole with Martin Truex, Jr. on the outside of row one. Ryan Newman, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will round out the top five respectively.
The USG Sheetrock 400 is scheduled to start Sunday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. EDT, with television coverage on TNT. The race can also be heard on the Motor Racing Network (MRN).
