Jeff Choquette posted the fastest overall time in Thursday practice for the Snowball Derby but would be the first to tell you that it doesn’t mean a thing.
“I felt like we executed the day well,” Choquette told Speed51.com after the three-session affair. “Practice doesn’t pay. There’s probably plenty of other cars that could have put down a good lap or maybe didn’t get a clean lap and weren’t able to show what they really had.
“Practice is a little deceiving, you can say, but it’s always nice to be able to be somewhere up front,” Choquette added. “Hopefully we can carry that into tomorrow night and get us a good starting spot for the Derby and focus on race runs.”
The Jett No. 9 rocketed around Five Flags Speedway at 16.525 seconds in the third and final session.
The theme of the first two sessions was Ty Majeski near the top of the charts and he was first and second after the first two hours of practice.
“I think it’s okay,” Majeski said. “The track’s going through a lot of changes, so we’re just trying to keep up with all that. We did a mock qualifying run at the end. Had a little bit of a miscommunication and got a bad read. We’ll regroup. We only have two sessions for tomorrow, we’ll try to get some speed into it.”
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Meanwhile, Bubba Pollard was fifth and not particularly pleased with it. But of course, Pollard has a long history of downplaying his speed after practice and he’s won the Oxford 250 and Canadian Short Track Nationals this season.
“We’re not as good as we need to be,” Pollard told Short Track Speed. “But we’re not bad. I feel like we can put ourselves in position to win. There’s a lot of racing left this weekend to make it happen for us.
“I think we’ll be fine. I think back to the Oxford 250 and I would have never thought we would win there until we started there. We have a good balance on the race car and as long as it drives good on Sunday, we’ll have a chance.”
Chandler Smith was ninth with multi-time Derby winning crew chief and driver Ricky Turner. He says this is the best he has felt in his three years running this race.
“Ricky and I think we have everyone covered on long runs so we’re just working on our short runs now,” Smith said. “We made just a handful of changes and think we’re going to be one of the cars to beat.
“Let’s see where we stand after qualifying.”
The complete combined times from Thursday Snowball Derby practice can be found below.
- Jeff Choquette 16.525
- Jesse Dutilly 16.575
- Derek Thorn 16.583
- Ty Majeski 16.606
- Bubba Pollard 16.639
- Connor Okrzesik 16.645
- John DeAngelis Jr. 16.661
- Chase Purdy 16.682
- Chandler Smith 16.682
- Raphael Lessard 16.685
- Harrison Burton 16.714
- Logan Boyett 16.715
- Chris Davidson 16.716
- Casey Roderick 16.719
- Stephen Nasse 16.733
- Jeremy Doss 16.742
- Kyle Plott 16.760
- Stewart Friesen 16.780
- Dennis Prunty 16.794
- Jerry Artuso 16.795
- Michael Atwell 16.805
- Kyle Bryant 16.825
- Steve Wallace 16.826
- Preston Peltier 16.833
- Derek Griffith 16.833
- Carson Hocevar 16.854
- Noah Gragson 16.862
- Kason Plott 16.866
- Spencer Davis 16.874
- Steve Wallace 16.879
- Tyler Ankrum 16.888
- Austin Nason 16.890
- Paul Shafer Jr 16.924
- Jack Dossey III 16.936
- Boris Jurkovic 16.947
- Blaine Perkins 16.953
- Perry Patino 16.961
- Mason Diaz 16.963
- David Rogers 17.011
- Donnie Wilson 17.014
- Derek Kraus 17.031
- Patrick Laperle 17.040
- Mason Mingus 17.044
- Kaden Honeycutt 17.088
- Corey Heim 17.112
- Augie Grill 17.114
- Jan Evans 17.329
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