Bobby Labonte, despite being with both a new team in Hall Of Fame Racing and manufacture in Ford, still feels he'll qualify well in the Daytona 500 qualifying on Sunday.
Don't be surprised if he wins the pole or starts from the outside pole position.
After all, while he races for Hall Of Fame Racing, his cars are prepared by Yates Racing. They typically have performed well on either of the restrictor plate tracks at both Daytona and Talladega.
Even if Labonte isn't one of the top two qualifiers during Sunday's qualifying session, he still expects to have one of the fastest cars and will give him a great starting position for one of Thursday's Gatorade Duels that set the field line-up from 3rd to 43rd.
"This car sat on the pole at Talladega [last fall with Travis Kvapil]", Labonte said at Daytona. "They're going to qualify good, I know that".
Labonte the 2000 Cup champion, will be reunited with crew chief Todd Parrott. They worked together briefly at Petty Enterprises in 2006 before Parrott returned to Yates Racing.
I doubt they'll have a learning curve like most new crew chief and driver pairings have and will rather quickly develop chemistry.
I'm excited that Labonte and Parrott will be paired together again. Since I always felt the two would have won races together in 2006, and maybe even the Petty Enterprises story would have been a lot different.
"I think that there is something to that, but I also know with Todd Parrott we've been together before just 2.5 years ago, so that's exciting to me," Labonte said. "I already know him. We had some great runs together...So hitting the ground running is going to be awfully important.
"We'll only grow stronger, because we're both committed to this thing. He's going to get the job done, and together we're going to have to get the job done.
"We've got unfinished business that we started, so we're going to go at it as hard as we can."
As a Labonte fan, needless to say, "I'm excited by what I saw during the 500 practice sessions, where he was second fastest in the first practice and fifth fastest in the second practice, and no doubt he's on my shortlist to win the pole".
Source: scenedaily.com
Photo Credit: yahoosports.com
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