Martin Truex Jr. will lead the field to the green flag for tomorrow’s race in America’s heartland.
The driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota scored the pole for the GoBowling.com 400 at Kansas Speedway with a time of 28.284 and a speed of 190.921 mph. It’s his eighth career pole and first of 2016.
“Thought it was good,” Truex said of his qualifying run. “Feels good to be getting another pole – it’s been a long time. I think I’ve got a XFINITY Series pole here at Kansas back in about ’05, so it’s been a little while here at Kansas and it’s been a few years in the Cup Series altogether. We’ve been really close with our Furniture Row team the past few years. We’ve qualified second a handful of times and been just right there at it. We’ve led the first round. We’ve led the second round. We just haven’t quite figured out how to lead that third round, so today just really proud of everyone at Furniture Row Racing. Bass Pro Shops/ TRACKER Boats Toyota was really good all day long and just can’t say enough about my team and what we have going on right now. Our Toyotas are really fast. Everybody at TRD (Toyota Racing Development) is giving us great engines and just doing all the things it takes to have fast race cars and that’s what it takes to get poles. Excited to be here. Excited for all of our guys and Barney (Visser, team owner) and just everyone in general for all they do and hopefully we’ll be able to finish the deal here tomorrow night.”
Matt Kenseth will start second in his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota after posting a time of 28.337 and a speed of 190.564 mph. Denny Hamlin will start third in his No. 11 JGR Toyota after posting a time of 28.361 and a speed of 190.402 mph. Kurt Busch will start fourth in his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 28.401 and a speed of 190.134 mph.
“I told them to write down the driver needs to get (Turns) 3 and 4 done better so that our lap times can improve,” Busch said. “I felt like I overdrove Turn 3 and I could feel the engine bog down a little bit off of 4 just because I killed the speed, I killed the momentum of the car. I didn’t quite carry it smoothly through 3 and 4. One and 2 was alright, but all-in-all the Haas Automation/Monster Energy Chevy, it feels good to be the top Chevy.”
Brad Keselowski will round out the top-five starters in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford after posting a time of 28.435 and a speed of 189.907 mph.
Kyle Busch will start sixth in his No. 18 JGR Toyota. Ryan Blaney will start seventh in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. Ryan Newman will start eighth in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
“Well, it was a decent run,” Newman said. “I’m okay with starting eighth. Track position is going to be important during the race. We’ve had a solid day and we have a good Grainger Chevy. I’m happy for my buddy, (Martin Truex, Jr.) even though he’s not the right brand, congrats to him.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will start ninth in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.
“That’s our goal in qualifying every week now, short track or mile-and-a-half, is to qualify in the top 10,” Stenhouse said. “We’re a little bit better at it at the mile-and-a-half for sure, but we had a little mishap there in the first round. I had to go out twice or I think we could have been a little higher in that final round. We got a little extra run on the tires there that first round, so that was a bummer.
“We did make some changes right before we switched to qualifying trim that I think made a good direction for our car and it actually ran faster and was a little bit better for us on the long run, so I’m excited to look at that and try to put all the pieces together and make the right adjustments for tomorrow night,” Stenhouse added.
Trevor Bayne will round out the top-10 starters in his No. 6 RFR Ford.
Paul Menard will start 11th in his No. 27 RCR Chevrolet. Carl Edwards will round out the 12 drivers that made the final round of qualifying in his No. 19 JGR Toyota.
Forty cars were entered, so no driver was sent home.
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