Updated: 10/28
Kyle Busch captured the pole for Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
“We’ve been good here the last few years, which his nice, especially this time of year,” Busch said. “The car has had good speed since we’ve been here. We’re just trying to fine-tune the balance. We want to be best and automatically transfer (to the Championship 4).”
Busch turned a lap of 96.254 mph to earn his fourth pole of the season and 31st of his career.
The lineup will become official following inspection on Sunday morning.
Sunday Update: Truex Jr. to Start From Back
Clint Bowyer, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney and Aric Almirola rounded out the top five.
“This feels like my 2012 season, when we won three times, and had the best year I ever had,” said Bowyer, who will look to sweep Martinsville this year after winning at the track in March. “This stuff is fun again. I find myself in a hurry to get to these races.
“The way I qualify, I’ll take it… The one thing I’m not confident here in my opinion is qualifying. We need to qualify well to contend for this championship and I did that today. We checked that off the box and hopefully we can check another one off tomorrow.”
Martin Truex Jr., Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Daniel Suarez or Kyle Larson completed the first 10 finishers.
“We were so close,” Kurt Busch said. “We were right there and I just slid the nose a fuzz on both ends in the third round. The second round I nailed it and I needed to duplicate that with older tires and I just had to go and let off the brake and slid the nose too much on both ends. That put us seventh. It is that tight for qualifying. I am kind of bummed. We had a shot at the and ended up seventh.”
Other Playoff drivers qualifying were Joey Logano (11th), Kevin Harvick (13th) and Chase Elliott (21st).
“To go a lot faster,” Elliott answered when asked what he needed during the session. “ It just wasn’t… didn’t do a real good job, just a lot of work to do.”
