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HAMPTON, Ga. — Kyle Busch won the pole for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway Friday. And then the defending Sprint Cup champion lost it.
NASCAR officials tossed out the Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s qualifying time when the No. 18 Toyota failed post-qualifying inspection. According to Scott Miller, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, the car’s rear toe alignment exceeded the maximum allowed.
“We’ve come up with a new process for post-qualifying and post-race that measures rear toe,” Miller said. “Teams asked for it because … this is a way to police that. Teams asked for it, we instituted it and they didn’t pass. The others passed.”
Instead of starting Sunday’s race from the pole, Busch will now line up 39th for the second race of the season. The front row will now consist of Kurt Busch (Stewart-Haas Racing) and Jamie McMurray (Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates).
Kurt Busch had originally qualified second; McMurray third.
According to Miller, teams are given a tolerance within which to work with the understanding that movements by certain pieces are expected. The pre and post-inspection tolerances are not equal because of that.
“It’s not exactly the same tolerance … we gave them some, but they took a little more,” he said of the team’s infraction.
Adam Stevens, crew chief for Busch, said it was the first case of measuring rear toe on the Laser Inspection Station for teams and that no previous data had been gathered to understand how much movement might occur.
“We were perfectly legal beforehand, obviously, or we wouldn’t have qualified, and just the amount of load on the track moves everything a little bit and that little bit was a little bit too much,” he said. “We don’t know how much to be under maximum because this is the first time we’ve gathered data (after qualifying). We’re going to have to undershoot the rule by quite a bit to make sure we don’t fail the post-race tolerance.”
According to Stevens, teams received a bulletin that detailed the process and that other teams could roll through the station in order to gather data.
“As soon as I got that email, I’m like ‘I’ve got to go, I want to go. Please let me go.’ It just so happened we were on the pole,” he said.
“Nobody in this garage knows what it’s going to do until you roll across after it and it just so happened that our time to gather information was game time and we were too much. We’re going to have to undershoot the rule and be way to the good pre-race or pre-qualifying and cross our fingers that it’s not too much after.”
Miller said because the issue was found in post-qualifying inspection, the loss of starting position would be the only penalty. “It would be different if they should fail post-race,” he said.