Rogelio Lopez Wins Pole For Friday's Aubuchon Hardware 125 at New Hampshire International Speedway
(Loudon, N.H.) – Rogelio Lopez, a rookie on the NASCAR Grand National Division, Busch East Series, will start Friday's Aubuchon Hardware 125 Presented by hardwarestore.com from the pole after turning the fastest lap in Thursday's qualifying session. This is Lopez' first pole in the Busch East Series, where he is running his first full season.
Only eleventh fastest after the only practice session earlier in the afternoon, Lopez and the Dave Davis Motorsports team sat down and devised some changes before the qualifying session. Those changes paid off with his picking up a half-second in time trials, resulting in a lap time of 30.319 seconds (125.624 MPH) around the 1.058-mile oval. He bettered the second place Matt Kobyluck by 0.044 seconds to earn his first pole position in series competition.
"The car is pretty strong and has pretty good balance," he said. "We made a few changes after practice for time trials because we were kind of struggling in practice with the tires. We found a good balance that should help on the long runs in tomorrow's race, and we're hoping for a podium finish although a win would be very nice."
Lopez has accomplished a lot in his first full season of Busch East racing, with his win at the Music City Motorplex in July and now his first pole.
"I've been learning a lot this year from my fellow competitors, seeing how they race and how they do time trials," he said. "I appreciate that and it's paying off with our win earlier this year and now we have our first pole position."
The Aubuchon Hardware 125, a support race run during New Hampshire International Speedway's NASCAR Nextel Cup weekend, will go green at 5:10 p.m. Friday evening. The race will be broadcast live on HDNet television with an enhanced replay on Speed Channel on Wednesday, October 3, at noon Eastern time.