With one less day of preparation for racing, NASCAR decided to cancel all qualifying sessions, to allow the teams to have practice time instead. As a result, the starting grid was set according to owner's standings, putting Carl in the 3rd spot. And from the looks of practice, that was a good thing. His practice speeds put him 22nd in the first session and 7th in the second and final session, so it seemed unlikely that he would have gotten a better starting position than 3rd.
Unfortunately during the race, 3rd was the closest he got to the front of the race. He did hang on to a top five position for about the first 40 laps or so. But then he steadily fell back, out of the top ten around lap 100, out of the top fifteen about 20 laps later. He would claw his way forward, only to slide back again.
But during a caution on lap 213, Dave Rogers called for big changes. In addition to four fresh tires and fuel, the pit crew also gave him a wedge adjustment and took two packers out of the front on both sides of the car. All that work took a little bit of time, so they restarted in 17th place. But the changes seemed to help, because he gained a spot about every other lap. In less than 40 laps, he was back inside the top ten.
He spent the next 75 laps or so between 8th and 15th, moving up a bit here, falling back a bit there. But while on pit road getting serviced during a caution, he ran into another car, damaging the left front corner of his car. To avoid losing a lap, they went back out on the track and restarted in 13th. But the damage was rubbing on the tire, quickly sending the 19 Arris Toyota Camry back to pit road for repairs, leaving him two laps down.
With less than 30 laps left in the race, he was able to get back one but not both of those laps. He finished the race in 19th place. That kept him in the 4th spot on the Chase grid, but he lost one spot in the drivers' standing, dropping from 3rd to 4th.
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