Pirate Galaxy » Dallas contributed to this report---Joshua Good

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Furniture Row Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. had a jack bolt confiscated from his car during an inspection before qualifying Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway, but NASCARs top competition executive said a points penalty is unlikely.Truex went on to win the pole for the playoff elimination race, turning a lap of 193.423 mph.NASCAR typically announces penalties Wednesday after the race weekend and has the option of issuing a points penalty that could be 10 to 25 points, depending on how severe NASCAR views the violation.NASCAR occasionally takes parts from cars and evaluates them after the race weekend in determining the penalty.But NASCARs initial reaction was that this would not warrant a points penalty. Scott Miller, NASCARs senior vice president of competition, compared it to a car failing body measurements before qualifying, then fixing it and going through without penalty or a warning. Miller said it was not a competitive advantage.I would say [a points penalty] is unlikely, Miller said. It has to go through our [evaluation] process. ... It could be [a safety issue], but it wasnt to the point to where we would think it was a safety infraction.Truex crew chief Cole Pearn said in a tweet Saturday that the jack bolt was a mistake and?also indicated it was clearly unintentional because, he said, common sense says center of gravity doesnt matter at Talladega.Truex, who has four wins this season, has a 13-point edge on the current cutoff spot in the standings heading into the final race of the Chase quarterfinal round of 12 Sunday at Talladega.If Truex is penalized, it could affect whether he advances in the Chase; he could be placed among the four Chase drivers who are winless in the round and have the fewest points.But if Truex was worried about a penalty, he didnt show it Saturday afternoon. After winning the pole, Truex said he was calm all day knowing NASCAR occasionally takes parts from cars.All the crazy talk going on today is nonsense, Truex said. People speculate on things and dont know what they are. The jack bolt issue is really not a big deal. ... It was a part manufacturing issue.Pearn said he hopes the team does not get a points penalty, but teams are never sure until they get a final decision from NASCAR. The team changed left front springs Friday, and the issue with the new bolt wasnt discovered until they went through tech Saturday.It was a stupid mistake, Pearn said. Obviously, youre not trying to lower the center of gravity on just the left front corner of one part of the car. ... Were not perfect.I know people like to think were brilliant geniuses that have malicious plans to cheat the system somehow, but sometimes were just stupid and make mistakes.While initial reports indicated that the bolt was hollow, Pearn said the jack bolt was not.Its got threads on the outside and its got an adjuster where you put it in on top, and its recessed in to allow the adjuster to go in, Pearn said. When they broached it down in, it was broached down in too far. Half of [the bolt] was solid, it was just recessed in too far.Brad Keselowski, in nearly a must-win situation Sunday, qualified second. He won the knockout race in 2014 to stave off elimination and said his best starting position at Talladega bodes well for him.I feel like qualifying well is certainly a very strong omen for Talladega and Daytona, he said. I think all of the races Ive won here, weve had good starts and the races that we havent won or been super-competitive we usually dont have any speed in qualifying, so its certainly a confidence-builder.Its not a guarantee by any means, but a confidence-builder that you carry into this weekend and carry into (the) race.Matt Kenseth qualified third and was followed by Chase Elliott, who is also in a must-win situation on Sunday. Greg Biffle and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. were fifth and sixth, and Roush-Fenway Racing put three of its cars into the final round of qualifying as Trevor Bayne was 11th.Rounding out the top 12 were Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Austin Dillon, Paul Menard and Reed Sorenson. It was a huge drop-off for Sorenson, who was the fastest car in the first round of qualifying.The Associated Press contributed to this report.Haason Reddick Youth Jersey . Aside from the trilogy main event title fight, there are a number of intriguing matchups in the heavyweight, welterweight and lightweight divisions. Pat Tillman Jersey .C. United of Major League Soccer. United chose the defender in the second round of the 2013 MLS re-entry draft. http://www.nflcardinalsrookiestore.com/Cardinals-Larry-Fitzgerald-Jersey/ . PETERSBURG, Fla. Kurt Warner Jersey .Y. -- The Buffalo Sabres have placed centre Cody Hodgson on injured reserve and recalled two players from their AHL affiliate in Rochester. Zach Allen Youth Jersey . The 31-year-old Spain midfielder hasnt played since Madrid lost in the Copa del Rey final to Atletico Madrid in May due to back and foot injuries.MEDELLIN, Colombia -- The pilot of the chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team told air traffic controllers he had run out of fuel and desperately pleaded for permission to land before crashing into the Andes, according to a leaked recording of the final minutes of the doomed flight.In the sometimes chaotic exchange with the air traffic tower, the pilot of the British-built jet requests permission to land because of fuel problems without making a formal distress call. A female controller explained another plane that had been diverted with mechanical problems was already approaching the runway and had priority, instructing the pilot to wait seven minutes.As the jetliner circled in a holding pattern, the pilot grew more desperate. Complete electrical failure, without fuel, he said in the tense final moments before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night.By then the controller had gauged the seriousness of the situation and told the other plane to abandon its approach to make way for the charter jet. It was too late. Just before going silent, the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea to land: Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors.The recording, obtained Wednesday by Colombian media, appeared to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the frantic exchange. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, point to a rare case of fuel running out as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, which experts said was flying at its maximum range.For now, authorities are avoiding singling out any one cause of the crash, which killed all but six of the 77 people on board, including members of Brazils Chapecoense soccer team traveling to Medellin for the Copa Sudamericana finals -- the culmination of a fairy tale season that had electrified soccer-crazed Brazil.A full investigation is expected to take months and will review everything from the 17-year-old aircrafts flight and maintenance history to the voice and instruments data in the black boxes recovered Tuesday at the crash site on a muddy hillside. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was taking part in the investigation because the planes engines were made by an American manufacturer.As the probe continued, mourning soccer fans in Medellin and the southern Brazilian town of Chapeco, where the team is from, held simultaneous stadium tributes to the victims. The six survivors were recovering in hospitals, with three in critical but stable condition, while forensic specialists worked to identify the victims so they could be transferred to a waiting cargo plane sent by the Brazilian air force to repatriate the bodies.Alfredo Bocanegra, head of Colombias aviation agency, said that while evidence initially pointed to an electrical problem, the possibility the crash was caused by lack of fuel has not been ruled out. Planes need to have enough extra fuel on board to fly at least 30 to 45 minutes to another airport in the case of an emergency, and rarely fly in a straight line because of turbulence or othher reasons.ddddddddddddBefore being taken offline, the website of LaMia, the Bolivian-based charter company, said the British Aerospace 146 Avro RJ85 jetliners maximum range was 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles) -- just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the flight originated carrying close to its full passenger capacity.If this is confirmed by the investigators it would be very painful because it stems from negligence, Bocanegra told Caracol Radio on Wednesday when asked whether the plane should not have attempted such a long haul.One key piece to unlocking the mystery could come from Ximena Sanchez, a Bolivian flight attendant who survived the crash and told rescuers the plane had run out of fuel moments before the crash. Investigators were expected to interview her Wednesday at the clinic near Medellin where she is recovering.We ran out of fuel. The airplane turned off, rescuer Arquimedes Mejia quoted Sanchez as saying as he pulled her from the wreckage. That was the only thing she told me, he told The Associated Press.Investigators also want to speak to Juan Sebastian Upegui, the co-pilot of an Avianca commercial flight who was in contact with air traffic controllers near Medellins Jose Maria Cordova airport at the time the chartered plane went down.In a four-minute recording circulated on social media, Upegui described how he heard the flights pilot request priority to land because he was out of fuel. Growing ever more desperate, the pilot eventually declared a total electrical failure, Upegui said, before the plane quickly began to lose speed and altitude.I remember I was pulling really hard for them, saying `Make it, make it, make it, make it, Upeqgui says in the recording. Then it stopped. ... The controllers voice starts to break up and she sounds really sad. Were in the plane and start to cry.No traces of fuel have been found at the crash site and the plane did not explode on impact, one of the reasons there were six survivors.However, there could be other explanations for that: The pilot may have intentionally dumped fuel in the hopes of reducing the risk of a fireball in a crash, or the aircraft could have suffered a fuel leak or other unexplained reason for losing fuel.John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Florida-based Safety Operating Systems, said the aircrafts amount of fuel deserves a careful look.The airplane was being flight-planned right to its maximum. Right there it says that even if everything goes well they are not going to have a large amount of fuel when they arrive, said Cox. I dont understand how they could do the flight nonstop with the fuel requirements that the regulations stipulate.--Goodman reported from Bogota. Associated Press writers Alba Tobella in Bogota, Ben Fox in Miami, Peter Prengaman in Rio de Janeiro and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report---Joshua Goodman is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman .Dallas contributed to this report---Joshua Gooderseys[/url] ' ' '