ARCA Racing Series rookie Casey Roderick turned the fastest lap during Menards Pole Qualifying presented by Ansell, earning the pole position for Saturday's Tire Kingdom 150 presented by ModSpace at Palm Beach International Raceway (PBIR) in a Bill Elliott-owned Dodge.

Roderick, the 17-year-old Bill Elliott Racing Development Driver from Lawrenceville, GA, toured the 2.034-mile, 11-turn PBIR road course at a speed of 93.325 mph, earning his first career Menards Pole award in only his second ARCA Racing Series start.

 

"It was good...faster than I expected," commented Roderick, who also qualified third last fall at Rockingham.

Roderick's time of 78.037 seconds was .315 seconds better than his practice speed, which paced the three hour session earlier in the day.

"It sort of surprised me, to turn a quick lap like that after we were as fast as we were in practice," Roderick concluded.

It was also Roderick's first attempt on a road course.

Justin Marks, one of the more experienced road course racers entered, qualified second with a top speed of 92.798 mph. Marks, driving the Construct Corps Dodge out of the Win-Tron Development shop, turned just two laps in the "group qualifying" format.

"It was a good lap," Marks stated. "Not the lap we had hoped for, though. Casey's lap was so good, we knew we couldn't get the pole, so laying down one good lap was good enough for us. We earned some qualifying points for the big picture."

Blake Koch, the Palm Beach, FL local favorite, was forced to the rear of the qualifying session after his ESR Team found problems with the #6 Tire Kingdom Toyota during and after practice. Koch jumped to third in the qualifying results with a speed of 92.773.

"We made some big swings with the car...the crew made some major changes after practice," commented Koch. "It says a lot about this Eddie Sharp Tire Kingdom team, to come back from the challenges we had in practice."

Tom Hessert qualified fourth in the Cherry Hill Classic Cars Dodge at 92.732 mph, getting bumped off the podium by Koch's late effort.

Mikey Kile (92.319 mph), in the fastest of four Venturini Motorsports entries, rounded out the top five in qualifying.

The Tire Kingdom 150, presented by ModSpace is scheduled to take the green flag at 1:00 pm Eastern Time on Saturday. Live timing and scoring, and a live streaming audio broadcast of the race can be seen and heard exclusively at ARCAracing.com.

-Courtesy ARCA PR