MARTINSVILLE, Va.– Joey Logano will lead the field to the green flag on Sunday at the Virginia paperclip.
The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford scored the pole for the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway with a time of 19.513 and a speed of 97.043 mph.
“Todd does a great job with this Shell/Pennzoil Ford,” Logano said. “I get to drive this thing and it’s so much fun every time we come here to Martinsville, especially in qualifying. We’ve got to figure out the race part. We haven’t got that grandfather clock yet, but qualifying is something that Todd and I have wrapped our heads around and really understand what we have to do inside the race car and outside the race car. I couldn’t be more proud of these guys. I say all the time that Martinsville is the most important track to start up front and that’s when you’ve got to come here and really show what you’ve got. Everyone back at the shop, the way they build these cars, they did a great job for us today.”
This is his 15th career pole in the Sprint Cup Series and third-consecutive at Martinsville. He joins Jeff Gordon as the only drivers to accomplish this feat.
Kasey Kahne will start second in his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.515 and a speed of 97.033 mph.
“It feels good,” Kahne said. “The car was really fast, this Great Clips Chevrolet. The guys did a nice job in practice and in qualifying. I just kept getting better with my laps…The car is fine. Just let me get my laps a little better.
“I feel good about it (the car). We had a top-10 here the last race, last year; with the backup car because I crashed it in qualifying and this car is better than our primary car was last time.”
Brian Vickers will start third in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.549 and a speed of 96.864 mph. Paul Menard will start fourth in his No. 27 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.551 and a speed of 96.854 mph as Ryan Newman rounds out the top-five in his No. 31 RCR Chevrolet after posting a time of 19.575 and a speed of 96.736 mph.
AJ Allmendinger will start sixth in his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet. Kyle Busch will start seventh in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
“We were okay, we’ve just been lacking a little bit overall all day and that’s just kind of what we missed it by there,” Busch said. “Overall, we have decent speed, we just need some more.”
Denny Hamlin will start eighth in his No. 11 JGR Toyota. Matt Kenseth will start ninth in his No. 20 JGR Toyota. Chase Elliott will round out the top-10 in his No. 24 HMS Chevrolet.
Brad Keselowski will start 11th in his No. 2 Penske Ford as Ryan Blaney rounds out the 12 drivers that made the final round of qualifying.
“It’s nice to get to the third round, but it didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Blaney said. “We didn’t really have good speed that last round, but it’s nice to get a decent starting spot. It’s on the outside, though, so that kind of stinks, but we’ll see how our car is tomorrow.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who just missed the cut into the final round after getting bumped from the transfer spot in the closing seconds of round 2, will start 13th.
“We just got a little bit tight on the lap that I thought was our best lap and I thought it could have been a little bit better,” Stenhouse said. “We didn’t need much, but I was happy with the Fastenal Ford. This is our best qualifying effort at Martinsville. It will give us a good starting spot for Sunday’s race.”
Carl Edwards will start 25th after not making it out of round 1.
“It’s frustrating for me because these JGR Toyota’s are so fast and for me to run 25th is pretty frustrating,” Edwards said. “I think we’ll race well and I ran enough laps that I got a pretty good view of what race true will be like.”
NSCS Complete Starting Lineup:
