Atlanta: Martino Friday notes

Tom Martino opened his qualifying effort for the Advance Auto Parts Southern Nationals with a pair of solid runs. After opening with an elapsed time of 6.996 seconds with a top speed of 199.97 miles per hour, Martino improved upon this initial effort with a 6.932-second, 198.47 mph pass in the evening session. This placed the CENTURY 21 Grand Am 10th midway through qualifying, with Martino pleased but looking for more.

"The easiest way to describe our day is that we're taking whatever our CENTURY 21 Grand Am will give us. We were encouraged after the first run, because it wasn't that good of a pass, and we were still 13th out of thirty-five cars. We made some changes for tonight's session, and it made a really nice run from the middle of second gear to the finish line, after being terrible at the starting line.

"For tomorrow, we'll take a little clutch out, adjust the car a little bit for the bald spots on the starting line, to improve off the line and hope we make the same run from second gear to the finish line, hopefully moving up a couple spots. There are some fast cars behind us, and we'd like to keep them there."

-TMR