May 8, 2015
By Jim Pedley
NASCAR Wire Service
KANSAS
CITY, Kan. – Joey Logano strengthened his standing as the NASCAR Sprint
Cup Series’ 2015 Qualifying Meister on Friday night as he won the Coors
Light Pole Award for Saturday night’s SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at
Kansas Speedway.
The pole was the fourth in 11 attempts this year for the Team Penske driver and his second in the last three weeks.
“Definitely cool to get another pole,” Logano said.
Logano,
who had never won more than two poles in a season in his previous six
full seasons in Cup, was asked about his sudden ability to dominate in
qualifying.
“Last
year it took us pretty much the whole year to get one pole,” he said.
“We won a lot of first and second sessions but we’d fall on our face in
the third session. So it’s pretty special to be able to figure out these
third sessions and still have a lot of speed in our car when we get to
those rounds. You don’t get anything for winning the first and second
rounds is what I figured out last year.”
Logano
nailed the pole with a lap at 192.397 mph and in 28.067 seconds in his
Team Penske Ford. It was a lap that knocked teammate Brad Keselowski
(who posted a lap at 191.857 mph/28.146 seconds) off the pole and it was
a lap that kept Kasey Kahne (191.911 mph/28.138 seconds) of Hendrick
Motorsports from knocking Logano off late in the third and final round
of knockout qualifying.
Keselowski will start P3 on Saturday.
Next to him in the second row will be Martin Truex Jr. in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Chevrolet.
There were several surprises in Friday’s qualifying session.
Perhaps
the biggest of those was the performance of Erik Jones. The 18-year-old
Jones, who is occupying the seat of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
because of the injury to regular driver Kyle Busch, was making his first
qualifying run in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Jones responded by
advancing to the final round and then putting down a lap that was sixth
fastest.
“I
thought it was pretty good,” Jones, who earlier in the day posted the
fastest lap in the final Cup practice of the day, said. “It was nice to
make the final round, it was good for us. Our teammates are pretty fast
this weekend and I’ve been leaning on them.”
Also
issuing an interesting surprise was Greg Biffle. Biffle, driving the
No. 15 Ford, became the first Roush Fenway Racing driver to advance to a
final round of knockout qualifying. His lap at 191.015 mph was the
seventh fastest of the final round.
“We
just got a little better speed in our car and this race track has been
pretty good for us,” Biffle, a former winner at Kansas, said. “We barely
made the first round and barely made the second and then I just drove
it – over drove it. I just said I was going to go for it. I didn’t care
what happened. I was 11th so I kind of had nothing to lose and that is a
hell of an improvement and a great accomplishment. The fact is though
that we have to find that speed for the race now and we are celebrating a
seventh and three years ago we would be mad right now. I am excited we
are seventh and not 27th but at the same time we will keep our head down
and keep improving on it.”
Carl
Edwards, who during a press conference earlier on Friday beat himself
up pretty badly for getting off to a slow start in his first year with
Joe Gibbs Racing, advanced to the final round of qualifying and will
start fifth.
“We’ve
really tried to focus all of our efforts,” Edwards said after
qualifying. “We’ve had bad luck and some problems and it’s time to
really get going here. Everybody has really stepped up and our Stanley
Toyota is great. If we can just have a good, solid race tomorrow and
perform the way we know we can then it’s going to be great. And Erik
Jones has helped a ton today too so everybody is coming together and
hopefully it yields a good result.”
Edwards
led the first round of qualifying as he went out early in the 20-minute
session, posted a lap at 192.342 mph. Second fastest was Logano of with
a lap at 191.904 mph.
In
the second, 24-driver round, Truex Jr. went out to take his lap with
just over five minutes left in the 10-minute round and responded with a
session-best lap at 191.986 mph. It was a lap that kept Edwards from
topping both sessions.
Failing
to make the third round were such notables as six-time champion Jimmie
Johnson of Hendrick Motorsports, teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., and former
series champions Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth.
The only driver to miss the race was Brendan Gaughan, who was driving the No. 62 of Premium Motorsports.
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