Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
He isn’t known as a top-notch qualifier, but so far this year, he is proving that to be wrong. For the second time this year, Matt Kenseth will lead the field to the green flag. Kenseth won the pole for the Coca Cola 600 with a lap of 27.799 seconds.
“My averages are way way up,” he commented. “These guys did a good job on the Camry. I thought we had some speed in practice, just had no balance. Everybody at JGR has been working around the track to get these cars ready. Its just one lap, but it’s a good way to start a 600 mile race.”
The driver of the No. 20 Dewalt Toyota has been fast this year with six top-10s in the 11 races thus far. Joe Gibbs Racing enters the event with momentum after Denny Hamlin secured the win in the Sprint All-Star race last weekend.
Joey Logano would qualify second to continue the trend of Team Penske being quick during the three-round knock-out format.
“It was an eventful qualifying sessions for us,” he said. “We barely made the first session, our team has done a good job maintaining speed throughout the sessions – that’s something that we struggled with last year. We just need to find a little bit more speed with our car and we have a couple days to find it.”
Carl Edwards would qualify third to place two JGR Toyotas in the top three after leading the day’s only practice session. Greg Biffle and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-five; Biffle enters this weekend with momentum following his Sprint Showdown victory.
Brad Keselowski was sixth quickest, followed by David Ragan, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr.
Notably, none of the Hendrick Motorsports drivers will start inside the top 12 for the 600 mile event. Jimmie Johnson will start 13th, followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 15th, Jeff Gordon 18th, Chase Elliott 28th and Kasey Kahne 33rd. Kahne did not get to make the qualifying attempt that he would’ve wanted as a result of a puncture in the left rear tire.
Jeb Burton, Jeff Green, Mike Bliss, Travis Kvapil and Brendan Gaughan would fail to qualify for the event.
