Qualifying rainout puts Jimmie Johnson on pole at Pocono
June 7, 2013
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
LONG
POND, Pa.--With practice and time trials at Pocono Raceway rained out
on Friday, Jimmie Johnson will start on the pole for Sunday’s
Party in the Poconos 400.
Johnson,
the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series leader, will bring the field to the green
flag with second-place Carl Edwards beside him on the
front row. With the starting order set by the rule book, the top cars
in owner points will be at the front of the field at the outset.
Only 43 cars are entered for Sunday’s race, so no cars are eliminated from competition by the rainout.
Clint
Bowyer will start third beside fourth-place Matt Kenseth, followed by
Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch,
Paul Menard and reigning Spring Cup champion Brad Keselowski. Twenty of
the last 30 Pocono winners have started from positions one through six,
with eight of those starting on the pole.
"There
are a lot of good benefits from starting on the pole, from track
position to pit road picks," Johnson said. "We’ll take it. The
great season that we’ve had so far and the quick start, it’s nice to
have that.
"It’s
one of the benefits (as the point leader) when things rain out. So we
certainly earned this first starting spot, and we’ll try
to take advantage of it on Sunday."
Four-time
Pocono winner Denny Hamlin, who missed four races with a compression
fracture of his first lumbar vertebra, will start 17th,
the No. 11 Toyota’s position in owner points. Hamlin himself is 26th
in the drivers’ standings, hoping to regain the top 20 and consequent
eligibility for a wild card spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
With
Saturday’s forecast also in question, and practice time in danger of
being curtailed, teams may have to rely on computer simulations
to determine the setups with which they’ll start the race.
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