Kasey Kahne, a driver who’s never had a top-10 finish in a Sprint Cup race on a road course, will have a leg up on breaking that drought Sunday, having claimed the pole for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.
For the third consecutive year, Kahne qualified in the top eight at Infineon, but his race results haven’t matched his starting positions.
“We’ve always raced good here for the first 70 laps,” said Kahne, who has two wins and a second-place finish in his past four Cup points races. “This year, we’re trying to make sure we’re more prepared than we have been in the past. I’ve always liked this place, and I like Watkins Glen [the other road course on the Cup circuit].
“We’ve been really fast at both places at times. If we just put a full race together, we’ll be fine.”
“To get the pole is always very difficult, especially at these tracks,” Kahne said. “There’s certain guys that seem like they are right there. We’ve been close here in the past, we’ve been close at Watkins Glen. So I felt I could make that one lap and come close to the pole and today we had a great Dodge and we were able to get it.
“I came in today thinking I had a good shot, but winning a pole at Infineon is tougher than it sounds.”
Jimmie Johnson qualified second with a lap at 92.040 and Kurt Busch was third with a lap at 92.005.
Bobby Labonte qualified fourth and was followed by five-time Infineon winner Jeff Gordon, Elliott Sadler and Marcos Ambrose. Robby Gordon, Ryan Newman and Greg Biffle rounded out the top 10.
Defending race winner Juan Pablo Montoya qualified 21st and two-time Sonoma winner Tony Stewart was a season-worst 39th.
“I guarantee this is the worst we’ll ever have started on a road course,” Stewart said. “Right now it’s going to be a long way to go.”
Drivers whose cars were among the top 35 in owners’ points this season automatically made the race, regardless of their drivers’ qualifying times.
But the remaining drivers did have to qualify on their speeds, and one was Boris Said of Carlsbad, a road-course specialist and part-time Cup driver. He will start 14th in a Ford.
Carl Edwards, who qualified 12th, said “the heat has made the car really slide around. It’s a lot of fun. I hope it’s this hot on Sunday.” But the Sunday forecast calls high temperatures to slip back to the 80s.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finally broke a two-year winless streak last weekend at Michigan, qualified 15th.
“I don’t really run that well here so I’m just hoping to get through the weekend,” he said. “I did the best I could. We got to find a little more speed.”
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