Matt Kenseth edges teammate Kyle Busch for Kansas pole
October 14, 2016
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
KANSAS
CITY, Kan. – To learn how to master the track that continued to jinx
him, Kyle Busch paid close attention to the way Matt Kenseth drove
Kansas Speedway.
Though
Kenseth was helpful, he apparently kept a thousandth of a second in his
pocket. That was the margin by which Kenseth edged Busch in Friday’s
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series knockout
qualifying session at the 1.5-mile track.
Touring
Kansas in 28.112 seconds (192.089 mph) to Busch’s 28.113 seconds
(192.082 mph), Kenseth earned the top starting spot for Sunday’s
Hollywood Casino 400 (at 2:15 p.m. ET
on NBC), the fifth race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and the
second race in the Chase’s Round of 12.
“Smoked him!” chortled Kenseth, as Busch emerged from the radio room after an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “Smoked him!”
The
Coors Light Pole Award was Kenseth’s first of the season, his third at
Kansas and the 18th of his career. With Busch claiming the second spot
on the grid and teammate Carl
Edwards (191.015 mph) qualifying third, JGR cars will start 1-2-3 for
the first time since August at Bristol.
“It’s
nice to get a pole,” Kenseth said. “I feel like our qualifying hasn’t
been nearly as good this year as it has been in the rest of the years
I’ve been at JGR. We barely
got it – it was by a thousandth, or something like that.
“Obviously,
our Camrys have been fast… Round one we were pretty decent—it was off a
little bit—and then round three it was just right. We almost got beat,
but it was as good
of a lap as we were going to run. They did a good job today.”
Kenseth
joined Joe Gibbs Racing in 2013. Busch didn’t get his first top five at
Kansas until the spring race of 2015, which started a run of third,
fifth and first in consecutive
events at a track where his average finish is 19.2.
Busch’s
second-place qualifying run on Friday was his best so far at the
1.5-mile track, and he freely acknowledged learning from Kenseth.
“We’ve
talked a little bit, and I’ve certainly used some of the things that
we’ve talked about with all of my teammates in order to get better
here,” Busch told the NASCAR Wire
Service. “Just looking and studying about technique and things that he
does and being able to work on how Matt carries his car around the track
and where he makes his speed and me trying to be able to do the same
thing.
“A
lot of it has just come through technique and just being able to mimic
the things that he does, and we’ve gotten a lot better at that.
Certainly, our balance could have been
a tick better in order to give me a little more security and feeling in
order to go out there and run two thousandths faster.”
Chase
driver Martin Truex Jr. made it a quartet of Toyotas on the front two
rows with a fourth-place qualifying effort at 190.786 mph. Alex Bowman
was the only non-Chase driver
to crack the top five, turning in a lap at 190.315 mph.
Of
the five drivers who finished 30th or worse last Sunday at Charlotte
and put their advancement to the Chase’s Round of 8 in jeopardy, Joey
Logano had the best recovery, qualifying
sixth.
“That’s
better than where we have been,” Logano said. “We qualified 14th here
the last two times we’ve come here. We made a serious effort at changing
some things here with the
way we qualified to start closer to the front which is important.
“That’s kind of where we were. We were about a sixth-place car today, and we need to find a little more, but we made progress.”
Denny
Hamlin, 30th at Charlotte and the eighth-place Chase driver entering
Sunday’s race, will start seventh. Kevin Harvick and Austin Dillon, both
currently below the Round
of 8 cutoff, qualified 11th and 12th, respectively.
Chase
Elliott, victim of a late wreck and resulting 33rd-place finish last
Sunday, failed to make the final round on Friday and will start 13th.
Two other Chase drivers qualified
outside the top 12: Kurt Busch (15th) and Charlotte winner Jimmie
Johnson (19th).
“From
Round 1 to Round 2, the car was much tighter,” said Johnson, who was
10th in the first round. “We attempted to free it up, but I'm not sure
some of those adjustments didn't
change the ride height of the car and affected the splitter orientation
with the ground. So, maybe we were on the splitter a little bit.
“But
a ton tighter than what we had in the opening round. But, other than
that, our car was repeating very well earlier in the day so kind of
leaning that way. I don't know if
it is good or bad, but I'm not accustomed to qualifying well all the
time. I'm used to racing through traffic. I'm not worried about this;
we'll just get that Lowe's Chevy up there.”
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Qualifying - Hollywood Casino 400
Kansas Speedway
Kansas City, Kansas
Friday, October 14, 2016
1. (20) Matt Kenseth (C), Toyota, 192.089 mph.
2. (18) Kyle Busch (C), Toyota, 192.082 mph.
3. (19) Carl Edwards (C), Toyota, 191.015 mph.
4. (78) Martin Truex Jr. (C), Toyota, 190.786 mph.
5. (88) Alex Bowman(i), Chevrolet, 190.315 mph.
6. (22) Joey Logano (C), Ford, 190.221 mph.
7. (11) Denny Hamlin (C), Toyota, 190.188 mph.
8. (2) Brad Keselowski (C), Ford, 190.087 mph.
9. (31) Ryan Newman, Chevrolet, 189.927 mph.
10. (47) AJ Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 189.840 mph.
11. (4) Kevin Harvick (C), Chevrolet, 189.580 mph.
12. (3) Austin Dillon (C), Chevrolet, 189.567 mph.
13. (24) Chase Elliott # (C), Chevrolet, 189.954 mph.
14. (14) Tony Stewart, Chevrolet, 189.940 mph.
15. (41) Kurt Busch (C), Chevrolet, 189.773 mph.
16. (27) Paul Menard, Chevrolet, 189.760 mph.
17. (21) Ryan Blaney #, Ford, 189.540 mph.
18. (17) Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ford, 189.387 mph.
19. (10) Danica Patrick, Chevrolet, 189.241 mph.
20. (5) Kasey Kahne, Chevrolet, 189.201 mph.
21. (48) Jimmie Johnson (C), Chevrolet, 188.976 mph.
22. (16) Greg Biffle, Ford, 188.930 mph.
23. (1) Jamie McMurray, Chevrolet, 188.094 mph.
24. (42) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 186.034 mph.
25. (6) Trevor Bayne, Ford, 188.376 mph.
26. (7) Regan Smith, Chevrolet, 187.669 mph.
27. (83) Matt DiBenedetto, Toyota, 187.578 mph.
28. (23) David Ragan, Toyota, 187.513 mph.
29. (13) Casey Mears, Chevrolet, 187.441 mph.
30. (34) Chris Buescher #, Ford, 187.331 mph.
31. (15) Clint Bowyer, Chevrolet, 187.246 mph.
32. (44) Brian Scott #, Ford, 186.819 mph.
33. (95) Michael McDowell, Chevrolet, 186.419 mph.
34. (38) Landon Cassill, Ford, 185.052 mph.
35. (43) Aric Almirola, Ford, 184.824 mph.
36. (55) Cole Whitt, Chevrolet, 183.163 mph.
37. (46) Michael Annett, Chevrolet, 181.898 mph.
38. (32) Joey Gase(i), Ford, 180.560 mph.
39. (98) Reed Sorenson, Toyota, 180.403 mph.
40. (30) Josh Wise, Chevrolet, 179.850 mph.
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