[media-credit name=”CIA Stock Photography, Inc.” align=”alignright” width=”221″]
[/media-credit]Joey Logano captured the pole for Sundays NASCAR Sprint Cup Series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a lap of 176.056 MPH, 30.672 seconds.
“These guys have given me a really good RedBeacon.com Toyota here. We were good in practice and they made the right adjustments for us to make sure it was good when the sun went down. They did their part and I did my part, and it came out perfect. I appreciate it. My last run with them, so it’s awesome to get a pole for them again.” Logano said.
Marcos Ambrose qualified second, series points leader Brad Keselowski third, Carl Edwards fourth and Aric Almirola qualified fifth.
Both championship contenders qualified in the top-10. Keselowski third and Jimmie Johnson qualified 10th.
Keselowski expected Johnson to qualify better than he did.
“I totally expected him to out-qualify us, to be quite honest. I was going to be fine with that. At least we were prepared for the worst and that’s not what happened so I guess we’re okay.” Keselowski said.
With a 20 point advantage heading into Sunday, Keselowski is feeling the pressure to win his first championship and the first for team owner Roger Penske.
“There’s always pressure. There was pressure all year long. I don’t feel drastically more than what I have. But the pressure is what makes it worth it. That’s part of what makes it special, what makes it mean something, so I’m not going to try to run from it. But I can deal with it very well.”
Johnson will be looking to score his sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) championship on Sunday and wanted to keep the pressure on Keselowski by capturing the pole.
“The best pressure I could put on him would be winning the pole. But we didn’t do that. Hopefully we’ll stay there in the top 10, which is good for us. We’ll get a good pit stall on pit road and go into race trim tomorrow and make sure we’ve got our race car right.”
