Carl Edwards came out on top in qualifying for this weekend’s Duck Commander 500 night race at Texas Motor Speedway, beating Penske’s Joey Logano to pole by 0.187s. “So, the track will be closer to what we race”, Logano said. “We’ve had good runs there in the past but just haven’t gotten to Victory Lane”.
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Before his Texas qualifying effort Allmendinger had qualified sixth, 11th and 12th in three of the last four races with finishes of second, eighth and 14th in the same events. Edwards and Johnson are the only drivers with more than two Cup wins at Texas.
Others like Matt Kenseth and Brad Keselowski also typically seem to find themselves in the top five near the end of these races but can’t seem to capitalize at the rate Johnson does.
Carl Edwards will lead the team to green from the pole. And although Stewart said he misses driving his vehicle, he said he doesn’t necessarily miss “the racing side of it”. Edwards won both races at Texas in 2008 after winning the 2005 fall race, but none of those wins was from the pole.
Harvick finished second a frustrating 13 times last season, including the finale at Homestead when he lost the championship to race victor Kyle Busch.
NASCAR’s low downforce package and TMS’ “worn-out” surface are paired here with Goodyear’s latest Eagle Speedway Radials compounds. And I truly believe if you run there long enough, you’ll have opportunities to win. He owns the best average finishing position at Texas and has the second best driver rating. Odds of racing are still around 90 percent. The good news is every Sunday when the race is over I’m not mad at anybody, and nobody is mad at me. Kenseth has only one top 10 finish this season, placing seventh at Phoenix. “Maybe we didn’t make the right adjustments before the final round”.
Yup, we definitely need to include Jimmie Johnson as a driver to watch this weekend as he looks to win his fourth race in a row at Texas. Everything’s bigger in Texas, little things more so than his finishes since then. It didn’t work for him last week at Martinsville but I believe his Texas dominance is a little different.
“It’s just this racetrack”, said Johnson, a six-time Cup champion with Hendrick Motorsports. Biffle has yet to score a top 10 finish this season.
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On the first lap after the final restart, lap 302 of 334, Busch went on the outside of Turn 4 to shoot around Martin Truex Jr. for the lead. In addition, get ready to go racing in prime time, as this will be the first Saturday night race on the season this year.
