By Staff report | NASCAR.com
Kyle Busch won the Coors Light Pole Award on Friday and will lead the field to green for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series Good Sam 500 at Phoenix International Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
This is the Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s first pole win of the season and his third at the Arizona track.
JGR locked up the top three starting spots when teammate Carl Edwards qualified second and will start next to the No. 18 Toyota on the front row on Sunday. Denny Hamlin qualified third.
Kurt Busch, who led the series’ opening practice Friday, qualified fourth.
Six-time Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson drilled the wall in the closing seconds of the third round of qualifying, bringing out the second red flag of the session. Johnson had run a lap at 137.174 mph and qualified fifth.
Previous Phoenix winner Kasey Kahne brought out the first red flag in the opening round of qualifying after his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet started smoking. Right before that happened, Ty Dillon got his No. 14 Chevrolet into the wall. Dillon is acting as interim driver for Tony Stewart this week as Stewart is still out due to injury. Neither Kahne nor Dillon advanced to the second round of qualifying.
Defending race winner Kevin Harvick qualified 18th. The 2014 Sprint Cup Series champion has earned seven wins at Phoenix.
The Sprint Cup Series returns to the track tomorrow for practice at 10:30 a.m. ET (FS1).
