Avondale, AZ – What began as a challenging night for Paul Menard and his No. 15 Menards Racing team, turned out to be hopeful for the future of the Dale Earnhardt Inc. Car of Tomorrow program. Not only did Menard’s teammates Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex spend most of the night in or around the top-10 pack of cars, but by the end of the night Menard’s crew chief, Tony Eury Sr., had Menard’s Chevrolet Impala SS running as fast as the top-10.
“We really worked all night and got it feeling pretty good for Paul, where he could run the same time as the leaders, by about the last third of the race.” Eury said. “The COT has been a work in progress for the 15 team and our lap times at the end are a good sign of things to come.”
The weekend started on a high note as he qualified for his first COT race of the season. His lap time of 27.76 seconds was good enough to lock him in the show immediately and resulted in an overall 33rd place qualifying effort.
“We changed quite a few things before qualifying,” Menard said. “Pops got it a lot better and it was all worth it at the end. It’s the first COT race that we’ve been in.”
While Menard was all smiles late Thursday, he knew that making the race was half the battle and quickly turned his attention to Saturday night’s race.
“The problem is that we don’t practice at night at all so when the sun goes down it’s going to be interesting to see what happens to the car.” Menard said. “But I think overall the track should just have more grip. We’re working on trying to get our car to cut through the corners better. You really have to be patient, wait for it to turn before picking up the gas.”
Menard spent two practice sessions on Friday working on the race trim handling of his Johns Manville Chevrolet. By Saturday, the team’s car chief, “B” Hoover, was feeling pretty good about their chances of success.
“We made a whole lot of changes this morning and I hope it’s going to help our program tonight.” Hoover said. “But starting back in 33rd is going to be tough because they lap cars so quickly here.”
Hoover’s fears were realized on lap 29 when the leaders had already closed in on Menard’s Chevy. Menard held on to the top spot of the lap down cars and when the caution flag flew on lap 38, Menard was rewarded with the “Lucky Dog” free pass and resumed his 39th place position on the lead lap.
By lap 70, Menard had worked his way up to the top 35, but was lapped by the leader once again on lap 85.
“The leaders are in clean air and they can close in on the back of the field really fast.” Menard said. “We just kept working on our car and hoped we would hit on something throughout the course of the night.”
Under caution on lap 211, the Menards Racing over the wall crew gained a spot of pit road and delivered Menard the adjustments he needed to advance ahead. While he restarted in 31st position, he was up to 27th place by lap 287. In the final thirty laps of the race, he was able to gain two more important positions and left Phoenix International Raceway with a 25th place finish and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the first time this season.
“This is the first time we’ve been the top Raybestos Rookie.” Menard said after the race. “I didn’t think we were going to get it tonight. We were just tight, tight, tight. But probably the best it’d been was that last run. Each pit stop seemed to get it just a little bit better and now we’ve got some points to show for it.”
Menard plans to turn the momentum from his last two top-25 finishes into superspeedway success during next weekend’s Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway. Qualifying for Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 takes place Saturday morning at 11:15 am Eastern.
