David Ragan wins pole for Brickyard 400

David Ragan wins pole for Brickyard 400

 

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

 

(July 30, 2011)

 

INDIANAPOLIS—The roll continued for David Ragan on Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

 

Ragan’s qualifying lap at 182.994 mph (49.182 seconds) was fast enough to win the pole for Sunday’s Brickyard 400, the 20th NASCAR Sprint Cup race of the season.

 

The Coors Light pole award was the second of the season for Ragan, who also picked up the first Cup victory of his career earlier this month at Daytona. Ragan is 13th in the Cup standings and is in a Chase-eligible wild-card position as the only driver in positions 11-20 in the standings with a victory.

 

Kasey Kahne (182.927 mph) will start from the outside of the front row. Early qualifier Jimmie Johnson, who went out 17th, saw his lap at 182.801 mph stand up for third, with Kurt Busch (182.671 mph) claiming the fourth starting spot in a highly competitive time-trial session.

 

Brad Keselowski will take the green flag from the fifth spot, followed by AJ Allmendinger, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth and series points leader Carl Edwards.

 

“It’ll be cool to lead the pack (Sunday),” said Ragan, who is in a contract year at Roush Fenway Racing, as is his sponsor, UPS. “I knew we had a shot at the pole when we unloaded in qualifying trim on Friday. (Crew chief) Drew (Blickensderfer) made a few small adjustments, and I just tried to hit my marks and not do anything crazy.

 

“I knew we had a shot at a top-five or top-10 run for sure, so I just wanted to be a little conservative. I hit my marks, and everything did what it needed to do, and we wound up on top. It’s an honor to be here and to be the fastest guy at Indy.”

 

Kahne’s lap was .018 seconds slower than Ragan’s, and though he slipped slightly off Turn 4, Kahne didn’t think that was enough to cost him the pole.

 

“I slipped, but I never had to come off the gas,” Kahne said. “I just drifted up through it. I don’t think it slowed me down much. If it slowed me down anything, it wasn’t enough to get the pole—and it was that close.

 

“I felt like I didn’t come to the green flag quite as fast as I should have, but the rest of the lap was really good. It was just really close. The 6 (Ragan) put down a great lap.”

David Stremme, Travis Kvapil, Erik Darnell, J.J. Yeley and Scott Wimmer failed to qualify for the 43-car field