Dover II: Paul Menard qualifying report

MENARD TO START 10th IN SUNDAY'S AAA 400 AT DOVER INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

DOVER, Del. (September 25, 2009) -- Paul Menard, driver of the No. 98 Energizer / Menards Ford Fusion will start Sunday's AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway from the 10th position. Sunday's start will mark Menard's third best starting position of the season.

"If we get a top-20 start out of the deal, I'll be pretty happy," said Menard immediately following his qualifying run. "We really struggled in qualifying the last few months. So, we put a big emphasis on it this weekend, and it just gained us so much more track position. Our race cars have been pretty good, we just haven't been able to qualify and that really puts you behind the 8-ball when the green flag drops. Hopefully the rain holds out tomorrow, but if it doesn't we've got some notes we can look back on. The rain's not supposed to come until the afternoon, so hopefully we'll get our session in and we'll be okay for the race on Sunday.

"This really says a lot about our No. 98 Energizer / Menards team. We've had good cars all season, but just haven't qualified well. We came into today knowing we need to qualify better and we did. If we can have some good runs tomorrow in practice, I think we'll have a pretty solid race on Sunday."

-credit: yr