Tyler Dippel wins the Pole Award for the Casey’s General Store 150 at Iowa Speedway on Friday, July 27, 2018 Photo – F4R
Continuing to dominate at Iowa Speedway, Tyler Dippel with DGR Crosley taking the K&N Pro Series pole award for the Casey’s General Store 150 on Friday afternoon after also finishing the second practice session in first place. Dippel races in the K&N Pro Series East and of note is that unlike the earlier practice sessions, the K&N Pro Series West have three of the top-five starting spots for the race. So, Dippel will have an eye to the rearview mirror on the green flag start at 8:30 pm ET
Bill McAnally’s Cole Rouse will start on the front row from second-place followed by Sunrise Ford Racing’s Derek Thorn and BMR teammate Hailie Deegan in third and fourth.
The trio of K&N West drivers all qualified better than their practice results and that could mean they found some power to compete against the DGR Crosley drivers for the combination race victory. Time will tell how much heat they can put on Dippel who will lead the field to the green flag. A point of note, Rouse, and Deegan both will start at the back of the field because they failed post-qualifying inspections.
Anthony Alfredo with MDM Motorsports ran into issues in the first practice when his car suddenly caught fire, ending his practice session, and forcing his team to pull out the back up for tonight’s race. With less time than his competitors for practice, Alfredo put in a fifth-place qualifying effort.
“I think it was decent. We never got to mock up,” says Alfredo about his qualifying run. “I’m honestly pretty happy with it considering that we didn’t get to make a mock run. We didn’t know what adjustments we needed to do to go faster. We got to make probably only 12 laps of practice by the time we got this backup car ready. We tried to do as much adjusting as we could to get it ready for the race and we took a swing at it for qualifying. I believe that would have been probably a second or third in a mock run speed. We’re already second now and if we can get a top-five starting spot, then that’s a great way to start, considering we didn’t get to make a mock run. We kind of went out there and it was a shot in the dark.”
DGR Crosley driver Tyler Ankrum who led the first practice qualified sixth followed by Ruben Garcia Jr, Spencer Davis, Derek Kraus, and Kyle Benjamin round out the top-ten. Kraus is the only K&N West driver in this group.
Time is ticking with the Casey’s General Store 150 about to start at 8:30 pm ET at Iowa Speedway. Who will walk away with bragging rights for their series…the East or the West?
Follow the action at NASCAR Hometracks – Race Central.