For the second week in a row, Kurt Busch turned a practice setback into a qualifying triumph.
A day after wrecking his primary No. 22 Dodge Charger in practice, his backup car blasted its way to the pole for Sunday’s 5-Hour Energy 500 with a fast qualifying lap of 171.579 mph. Busch will start alongside Paul Menard, whose No. 27 Chevy clocked 171.422 mph.
“Just an amazing swing of events,” said Busch, who won the pole last weekend at Kansas Speedway after spinning out during practice. “To pull out a backup car that was a pole-winning car, that’s something you really wouldn’t hear about back in the day. It would be, ‘you’re going to have to struggle through the weekend, it’s not the best piece.’ It’s good that we’ve got that high quality control within our system.”
Next were Jeff Gordon (171.350) and defending race champion Denny Hamlin (171.174)—both four-time winners at Pocono—Regan Smith (171.164) and Carl Edwards (171.057). USA Today
Carl Edwards, Marcos Ambrose, Ryan Newman, David Reutimann and Mark Martin completed the top-10. Edwards was the last driver to make his qualifying attempt since he was the quickest in Friday’s first practice session.
NASCAR made a slight change in the qualifying procedure for Sprint Cup, which went into effect this weekend at Pocono.
The qualifying order is now determined by speeds—from slowest to fastest—posted during the first practice only. It is no longer separated between those teams that are top-35 in owner points, which automatically locks them into the starting field, and teams that must qualify on speed. MiamiHerald.com
Busch was impressed that Penske could produce a pole-winning backup car.
“That’s something you really wouldn’t hear about back in the day,” he said. “It would be, ‘All right, you’ll have to struggle during the weekend.’”
“This 22 crew, the 2 car guys [of teammate Brad Keselowski], everybody back at the shop, the fab guys here—what an effort,” said Steve Addington, crew chief for the 22. “When we unloaded the backup car, we had made so many changes during practice with the primary car [that] we didn’t get a lot of track time with the backup.
“The work they did to get this car ready was awesome. To lay down a lap like that is pretty impressive—and that guy that sits behind the steering wheel isn’t too damn bad, either.”
“We really thought it would rain, so we posted a good lap in practice, which made us go out late,” said Menard, the 43rd of 44 drivers to make a qualifying attempt. “When you look at hourly forecasts, it was 70 degrees from start to finish, so the track conditions didn’t change a lot.
“It might have gotten a little bit hotter, but I think we got a little bit of cloud cover right at the end of qualifying, so that probably helped.” NASCAR.com
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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono - Race Line-Up
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