HAMPTON, Ga. — Cole Pearn and his Furniture Row Racing team didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy last Sunday’s runner-up finish in the Daytona 500.
The Denver, Colorado-based team was back in the shop bright and early on Monday, the crew chief for driver Martin Truex Jr. said, thrashing to get ready for this weekend’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway (1 p.m. FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
“I’d like to say it carried over more but we were right in at 6 a.m. Monday, back to work and we worked massively long days just getting ready to come here,” Pearn said Saturday at AMS. “I think it’s good for the guys, the fact that they put in all that hard work over the winter and then to see the results gives them that confirmation that it was worth it. So hopefully we can carry that same type of feel this weekend.”
Truex’s No. 78 Toyota finished beside, but not ahead of, Denny Hamlin in the season-opening race.
The single-car entity, owned by Barney Visser, has been equally fast this weekend at AMS, ending final practice second only to Hamlin. He was eighth in Friday’s opening session and qualified ninth for Sunday’s main event.
A lack of on-track time, a new rules package and warmer temperatures forecast for Sunday leave a lot of room for concern.
“It’s a bit of a question mark,” Pearn said. “I think a lot of guys are going to be fighting it pretty hard. It’s going to be a lot warmer; I think that’s a big question mark. The track will be slicker … definitely some question marks but more so because of the new package. I think that’s the bigger thing.
“We’ve made good gains. Didn’t change a whole lot and seemed to have good speed the whole time (in final practice). The long-run speed was good. I feel reasonable about it anyway.”
The team unloaded its backup entry as soon as Saturday’s final practice had concluded, placing it on another transporter and sending it back to the race shop.
Pearn said the backup car will be used during Thursday’s open test at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leading into the weekend’s Sprint Cup race. A new car has been built for the race.
“We’re lean on parts,” he said of the team that lost two cars during Speedweeks in Daytona. “So getting it back a day and a half earlier really will just help them get all the data acquisition things on it, get it ready to go for Thursday.”
— A roof-flap violation during pre-qualifying inspection at Daytona kept Truex from posting a qualifying time and Pearn was placed on probation through the end of the year as a result.
“It was propped up too much,” he said. “(NASCAR) wanted to put (the car) back through templates before we adjusted it. We just didn’t have time to get back there and do that before we got back out.
“It’s kind of a new era so you just have to understand what’s going to happen. I would have like to have just knocked it down and seen what it would run.”