Originally Posted by beachbum
When you are 30th, you can't go much lower. They will go up when they go to a full qualifying setup, but as others have pointed out, nearly all of the teams were in race trim as well. Danica could not hang with her teammates in a draft (at 218-220) and was often even slower running alone. Her "quick" lap was with a huge draft. When the DRR team went out in a group at the end, the whole group was running lap times a few tenths quicker than Danica had been running when she was drafting. At one point she was drafting another car and both of them caught Milka running alone. The other car pealed off into the pits. Milka (running alone in the 219 range) just pulled away from Danica and after another lap, Danica pulled in.
Her team seemed careful not to have her run alone. When she did, she was one of the slowest cars on track. Nearly all of the time she was drafting someone. Her lap times were also rather erratic, unlike most of the other drivers (including the rookies). If that is their race setup, it is a very conservative one and not fast. As an example, Simona was regularly running very consistent times by herself that were 2 to 3 tenths quicker than Danica was running in a draft. The only excuse that might fly is running with full tanks and real old tires all the time, but she ran some fairly long segments that would have burned off fuel and most teams ran one set of tires all day.
However, I expect to see a quick time first thing today. The other AA cars are up near the front, so they have a setup that will go quick if she can hang on - for a few laps.
