Matt Kenseth will lead the field to the green flag on Sunday afternoon in America’s heartland.
The driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota scored the pole for the Hollywood Casino 400 after posting a time of 28.112 and a speed of 192.089 mph. It’s his 18th pole in 609 career Sprint Cup Series starts, first of 2016 and third at Kansas Speedway.
“It’s nice to get a pole,” Kenseth said of getting his first pole of the season. “I feel like our qualifying hasn’t been nearly as good this year as it has been in the rest of the years I’ve been at JGR. We barely got it – it was by a thousandth, or something like that. Obviously our Camrys have been fast. Our DEWALT FLEXVOLT Camry has been driving good and all the right adjustments. Round one we were pretty decent, it was off a little bit and then round three it was just right. We almost got beat, but it was as good of a lap as we were going to run. They did a good job today.”
Kyle Busch will start second in his No. 18 JGR Toyota after posting a time of 28.113 and a speed of 192.082 mph. Carl Edwards will start third in his No. 19 JGR Toyota after posting a time of 28.270 and a speed of 191.015 mph. Martin Truex Jr. will start fourth in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota after posting a time of 28.304 and a speed of 190.786 mph. Alex Bowman will round out the top-five starters in his No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after posting a time of 28.374 and a speed of 190.315 mph.
Joey Logano will start sixth in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. Denny Hamlin will start seventh in his No. 11 JGR Toyota. Brad Keselowski will start eighth in his No. 2 Penske Ford. Ryan Newman will start ninth in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. AJ Allmendinger will round out the top-10 starters in his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet.
Kevin Harvick will start 11th and Austin Dillon will round out the 12 drivers that made the final round of qualifying.
Twenty-one Chevrolet’s, 11 Ford’s and eight Toyota’s will comprise the 40-car field for Sunday’s race.
