Kenseth captures the STP 400 pole at Kansas; Breaks up Ford front row

On a very difficult day that was cold and windy the boys of summer came to play at Kansas.

Cars of every make and every team carried a remembrance of those injured or lost in the Boston Marathon Bombings. From Swan Racing and Stewart Haas to Hendrick Motorsports the decals varied from ribbons to the logo of Boston Red Sox. Missouri driver, Carl Edwards reflected on the tragedy, “I know I can speak for all of Roush Fenway Racing in saying that our thoughts are with everyone there that’s not only suffered, but all the confusion that’s going on. I don’t think anyone really understands exactly what’s happened yet, and without sounding cliché what Roush is doing is trying to do something to help. Steve Newmark and Jack Roush put together a program where Jack is gonna donate some money to a cause up there to try and help with whatever they need help with, and then we also pledged $100 for every lap that one of the Roush Fenway leads at the race track this weekend.”

The sentiments were echoed by Jimmie Johnson whose Hendrick Motorsports team has a close tie to the tragedy, “I would assume everybody has seen the press release, but last night the shooting that took place unfortunately has some attachment to Hendrick Motorsports. Someone in the engine shop it was his brother, Andrew Collier’s brother, Sean was tragically killed last night. Still a lot of questions going on obviously if anybody has had a chance to watch the new today there still is a lot of chaos taking place in Boston. Trying to gather all that is going on, but a very sad time. My thoughts and prayers are with the Collier family. I certainly know that it is the same thing for all of Hendrick Motorsports. We are one big family and it’s sad and unfortunate to see a fellow teammate and his family going through such a tough time.”

The qualifying for the Sprint Cup cars went off with only one casualty. That casualty was Jeff Gordon. Gordon lost the rear of the car coming out of two and hit the wall with both ends of the car. The No.24 team immediately pulled down the backup car. Gordon, would take the champions provisional to start tail end of the field.

“I was committed. We have been tight, and I wasn’t tight. It felt great coming to the green and I was pretty happy with it through (turns) three and four and I got down into (turns) one and two and I arced it in there just the way I wanted to and got to the yellow line and started picking up the throttle and it just slowly came around. For a second I thought I was going to save it. I lit the tires up to keep it from hitting too hard and now we have a car and an engine that are pretty much done and it’s been a while since I wrecked qualifying.” Gordon said.

The pole was won by Matt Kenseth with a time of 28.145 seconds/191.864 mph around the 1.5 track.  This was Kenseth’s ninth career pole and the first of the 2013 season.

The outside front row belongs to Columbia, Missouri native Carl Edwards with a time of 28.162 seconds/191.748 mph.

The top-4 qualifiers broke the track record in qualifying.

Joe Nemecheck was the lone car to not qualify for the race.