Hildebrand rebound earns first front-row start

JR Hildebrand's roller coast 2017 continued Saturday at Iowa Speedway. After hitting the wall in Saturday's opening practice, Hildebrand's two-lap average of 183.811mph was looking hard to beat – except, of course, that the driver at the end of the qualifying line was Will Power, who picked up career pole number 48 by a time 1.4 seconds better than Hildebrand's. Considering the damage that could have been done by his early crash, Hildebrand considered second a good rebound.

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"I think based on the day that we've had, I think that that context certainly makes it a little bit more of a positive thing," Hildebrand said. "We certainly came in here expecting that we could put the car in the front row, so I'm just sort of in a way relieved that we were able to kind of recover from this morning and do that. You know, otherwise you obviously want to be able to capitalize on opportunities to get poles when they present themselves. Today certainly would have been one of those for us, but I think in the big scheme of things, we'll certainly take a front-row spot.

"It really ends up being about how the car is over the duration of a stint at this place. You know, it's nice to start up front, but we'll definitely be putting some work in this afternoon."

Hildebrand, who has been racing with a plate and 10 screws in his hand since a crash at Long Beach, credited his crew for fine-tuning the No. 21 Chevy so he could jump back in and deliver a good starting spot.

"For us, it's just more about getting everything going, getting everything back together, getting back out there, knowing now that we can go into the afternoon session really focused on tomorrow's race rather than continuing to feel like we're kind of recovering from this morning and looking forward to that. Yeah, anywhere you can be in more clean air is certainly better, and we'll look forward to that at the start of the race tomorrow.

"I think I was pretty convincing to myself that I was just going to – I mean, regardless of this morning, that the team was going to give me something that was better by at least a little bit in that same spot, and it was better by a little bit in that spot. You know, I mean, I think that it's one of those things in this series, I certainly am a believer that the teams would rather see us go out in situations like that and have faith and trust that they've given you something a little bit better and that you can stick it and have something go wrong again than have you kind of pussy footing it through there just because you're worried about it.

"So I felt like after the job that the team did to get it back together and all that kind of stuff that I at least owed them a shot to get through there flat out, and fortunately it stuck and hung on."

Hildebrand, who's finished 12th or worse in the past six races, will be looking for his first top-five finish since Phoenix – his best result since ending up as the runner-up in the 2011 Indy 500.