NASCAR O'Reilly

BUSCH: Fontana II: Paul Menard qualifying notes

Menard Qualifies for Inside-10th-Row Starting Position at Saturday's Target House 300 at California Speedway FONTANA, Calif. (Friday, Sept. 3, 2004) -- Paul Menard and the ...

Edited: Apr 16, 2008, 12:40 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Menard Qualifies for Inside-10th-Row Starting Position at Saturday's Target House 300 at California Speedway

FONTANA, Calif. (Friday, Sept. 3, 2004) -- Paul Menard and the #11 Menards/Pittsburgh Paints Chevrolet of Dale Earnhardt, Inc., will start Saturday's Target House 300 on the inside of the 10th row after NASCAR Busch Series qualifying this afternoon at California Speedway.

Menard clocked a fast lap of 179.274 mph (40.162 seconds) around the 2-mile tri-oval, good for 19th out of 44 car-and-driver combinations trying for Saturday's 43 starting positions. The 24-year-old Menard, from Eau Claire, Wis., was 15th in this morning's opening practice session.

Casey Mears will start tomorrow's race on the pole alongside fellow front-row starter and series points leader Martin Truex, Jr.

Race time Saturday is noon local time (3 p.m. EDT) with a live broadcast set for NBC-TV.

PAUL MENARD

"I guess what we got was par for the course. Everybody seemed to lose about a tenth or two since practice. The track has gotten really hot. We made a lot of changes since this morning's practice session. Fortunately, we have a good idea of what we need to do to give us a good race car for tomorrow. This is the Menards car we took to Michigan (two weeks ago, where Menard was fastest in Friday-morning practice before qualifying was rained out and the team had to go home early). We started with the same setup we had at Michigan and found out that basically we're talking about two different racetracks. They may look the same on paper but that's certainly not the case when you put a racecar on it. I think we'll be in good shape for the race."

-dei/mr-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article BUSCH: Fontana II: Round 25 preview

Next article BUSCH: Fontana II: David Stremme race notes

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Fernando Alonso backs IndyCar Barcelona race but warns against wider global expansion

IndyCar

Indy IndyCar 10 min

Fernando Alonso backs IndyCar Barcelona race but warns against wider global expansion

MotoGP riders ask for guarantees to go and race in Qatar

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Australian GP

37 min

MotoGP riders ask for guarantees to go and race in Qatar

Barcelona joins 2027 IndyCar schedule in multiyear deal

IndyCar

Indy IndyCar 1 h

Barcelona joins 2027 IndyCar schedule in multiyear deal

Lamborghini Super Trofeo |Europe, Race 2: Salonen/Tuomaala take the win, Iaquinta/Gilardoni crowned champions

Lamborghini Super Trofeo

LBST Lamborghini Super Trofeo

World Finals - Monza 2026

1 h

Lamborghini Super Trofeo |Europe, Race 2: Salonen/Tuomaala take the win, Iaquinta/Gilardoni crowned champions

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts