Qualifying for the Kobalt Tools 500 in Phoenix was everything but smooth for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers as the new configuration frustrated many drivers including Jeff Gordon and Jamie McMurray.

[media-credit name=”Credit: Christian Petersen/Getty Images” align=”alignright” width=”225″][/media-credit]Along with the new configuration came the wild prediction that we would see an unfamiliar face winning the pole position which is what we saw as Matt Kenseth scored his 7th career pole in his 435th career start. Kenseth wins a pole 1.61% of the time! Now that is a shocker!

A.J. Allmendinger qualified 2nd as this is his 3rd front row start in his last four tries in Phoenix. Points leader Carl Edwards had the pole for a short time this morning and would later end up in 9th. His closest rival in the standings Tony Stewart took his beard and his #14 car to 8th position.

Track position during this race will be extremely crucial due to the major unknowns of the new configuration and I’m predicting a first-time winner this weekend.

For those of you who follow the old system standings, Edwards will have to have a very bad race and Jimmie Johnson will have to have a really good race in order for it to be close again.

Edwards leads the 48 by 45 points with just two races to go.

Kyle Busch, who had the points lead for most of the year, was involved in wrecks at Talladega, Martinsville, and the now infamous incident at Texas. Busch has pretty much given up the championship. After sitting out at Texas, he now sits a distant 97 points out of the race and is officially out of contention.