Denver: Tom Hammonds Friday qualifying summary

Hammonds is close, but will need to pick up the pace on Saturday in Denver.

Tom Hammonds's qualifying effort at the Mopar Parts Mile High Nationals started according to plan, as he opened with a solid 7.448-second, 185.18 mph run. This not only placed the Winnebago/GM Vehicle Care Cavalier 14th, but gave the Hammonds crew a solid baseline from which to tune for the crucial evening session.

However, even though Hammonds was able to take advantage of the improved conditions during the evening session to better his initial attempt by nearly a tenth of a second, his 7.347-second elapsed time fell seven thousandths of a second shy of the top sixteen positions necessary to qualify.

Hammonds will now turn his attention to further fine-tuning his car for Saturday's twin time trials, where he will look to put himself back in Sunday's field.

"We definitely have room for improvement. Right now, our Winnebago/GM Vehicle Care Cavalier is just running too rich, and we can't seem to take enough fuel out of our tune-up.

"We spent quite a bit of time studying the data and coming up with a plan, and I think with the changes we're going to make, we should definitely improve, and although the conditions tomorrow morning will not be as good as tonight's, they will be sufficient that if we make a perfect run, we might be able to jump into the top half of the field. But at the very least, we should be able to make a good run and get ourselves back in the show."

-thr-