Martin Truex Jr. returned to the site of his only Cup Series victory and found success again Saturday afternoon, winning the pole for Sunday’s AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway.
Truex, who claimed his first Coors Light Pole Award of the season and the sixth of his career, will start the third race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup next to Kurt Busch, the highest qualifying driver eligible for the championship.
Truex turned a lap at 159.004 mph (22.641 seconds) to edge Busch (158.983 mph) for the top starting spot. Paul Menard (158.667 mph) qualified third, followed by Chase drivers Carl Edwards (158.555 mph) and Kyle Busch (158.548 mph).
Dover is the home track of Truex, a New Jersey native, and in this case, familiarity breeds excellence. His lone victory in the Cup Series came at Dover on June 4, 2007—also from the pole. NASCAR.com
“We worked through a lot of things in practice [Friday], and the car was pretty good in the first practice, and then we went into the second practice and fought some things,” Truex said. “We’ve had a really good [car] the last couple of times that we’ve been here…Hopefully, we can put it together tomorrow.”
Truex, a non-Chase driver, became the 17th different pole winner in NASCAR’s premier series this season. His first and only Sprint Cup race win so far came in June 2007 at Dover.
Jimmie Johnson, the defending race winner, will start sixth. Johnson, who is attempting to win his record-extending sixth straight series championship, is presently 10th in the standings, 29 points out of the lead.
“I know there’s a lot of focus on a rebound, but you look at Chicago and even the race prior to that [Richmond], we were fast, and we’ve been fast,” Johnson said. “We just haven’t been finishing where we’ve been running, and we got to correct that problem.” MiamiHerald.com
Tony Stewart and four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon struggled during qualifying and starts 34th.
Stewart’s two wins in the Chase so far have only given him a seven-point cushion over Kevin Harvick entering Sunday’s race. With four Chase drivers starting in the top six at the concrete mile, this could be the race where the standings get rattled.
Stewart had little explanation for his struggles, other than saying his car was tight.
Denny Hamlin, all but out of contention, starts 11th. Brad Keselowski was 15th, Matt Kenseth 18th, Ryan Newman 20th, Dale Earnhardt Jr. 21st, and Harvick starts 22nd. CBSSports.com
After a lap of 156.760 mph, Stewart said, “We were just tight. We struggled (Friday) in practice and obviously didn’t get the lap we wanted. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
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