Kasey Kahne is trying to leave Richard Petty Motorsports in style.
Kahne is winless this season, his last at RPM before he moves on to Team Red Bull next year and then to his more permanent residence at Hendrick Motorsports in 2012.
Although victory lane has been closed to him, Kahne has been fast this year. He proved that again Friday by winning the pole position for Sunday’s Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Kahne turned a fast lap of 174.644 mph to edge surprisingly fast Paul Menard for the first starting position in Sunday’s race. Menard gave the front row an all-Ford look with a lap of 174.469. FOXNews
Jeff Gordon (third fastest at 174.430 mph), Greg Biffle (fifth at 174.255 mph), Matt Kenseth (eighth at 173.902 mph) and Kurt Busch (ninth at 173.874 mph) are the only Chase drivers in the top 10. Points leader Denny Hamlin will start 12th, and four-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson—currently second in the standings—rolls off 21st.
“To me, it shows that myself and Paul and our teams are still really interested in running strong and not backing down at all just because we have other things we are going to do in the future,” Kahne said. “At the same time, it shows that RPM is giving us great race cars. Roush Yates is giving us great engines. We have the package—we just need to put it all together.”
Gordon was elated with his best starting position since he qualified second at Darlington in May.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve qualified well,” Gordon said. “We’ve been trying really hard to qualify better, and I think it has been impacting our races. I feel like we race better when we qualify up front.” NASCAR.com
Menard, who will take his lucrative Menard’s family sponsorship to Richard Childress Racing as the fourth car next year, has not qualified any better than seventh all season and finished 30th at Kansas last year. But he has qualified in the Top 10 in the last three weeks and finished seventh last week at Dover.
“The car is driving good,” Menard said. “If the car isn’t driving good then it makes for a long day for sure. We had some notes from last year where I think we qualified 20th. We had some video of the lap and picked up some things from that. It is a totally different race car and totally different set up though, and it is working.” Kansas City Star
Carl Edwards, who will start 31st, was the lowest-qualifying Chase driver. Three of his Roush Fenway Racing teammates — Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and David Ragan — all qualified in the top 10.
“I am frustrated because we were much faster than that in practice,” Edwards said. “We have to figure out what went wrong there. We will work on our race trim and see. The good thing is that you can pass here.” The Associated Press
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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Price Chopper 400 at Kansas - Race Line-Up
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