Martin Truex has one of his four career Sprint Cup wins at Pocono Raceway.
Advertisement
He added his 10th career pole, too. The Pennsylvania 400 is scheduled for Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
Truex extended Toyota’s recent romp, and turned a lap of 179.244 miles per hour to win the pole Friday in Long Pond, Pa.
The two drivers flip-flopped in the second round with Truex being the fastest and Edwards second. As Truex eluded to during his post-race press conference, he is using the same auto from Charlotte Motor Speedway, where he led a race-record 392 laps.
“We had a good vehicle at Indy last week and it took us a little bit to get it sorted out because it was a new auto”, Menard said after qualifying. Truex’s Furniture Row Racing team is an affiliate of Edwards’ Joe Gibbs Racing team, which also fields Toyotas for defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth.
“It’s a really neat time to be driving a Toyota for Joe Gibbs”, Edwards said. “So, we’ll just keep fighting for more wins”. His win this season at Charlotte Motor Speedway might have been the most dominant performance by any Toyota driver in a race in years. Menard has just two top-10 finishes all season.
But a crew chief switch might make the difference.
Earlier this week, Danny Stockman took over as crew chief for Menard and the move paid immediate dividends with the third qualifying spot. RCR dumped Justin Alexander for Stockman for Menard’s stretch run.
Menard made Sprint Cup’s championship chase past year but stands 23rd with just six races left in the regular season.
“We stubbed our foot here in June”, he said.
“We unloaded in qualifying trim and worked hard on qualifying”. It’s not fun to get beat down. “Everybody at the shop, we have all the tools to do this right”. That’s the first time all three RCR Chevrolets have cracked the top 12 for the same race since August of 2014 at MI. Austin Dillon was 12th.
Keselowski was testing at Watkins Glen, where the Sprint Cup series goes next weekend. The Team Penske driver walked away unhurt and he blamed an improperly installed brake line on the crash.
“I’m not exactly sure of the exact technical thing that happened (with the LIS), but it got back online really quick”, Miller said.
Jeff Gordon, driving the No. 88 auto for the second straight weekend, was forced to take a second lap in Round 1 after being on the bubble of missing the cutoff.
Gordon came out of retirement to drive Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet. Rookie Chase Elliott was the only one of the team’s drivers to advance to the final round of qualifying, ending the afternoon in eighth.
“I wish Dale a speedy recovery”.
Advertisement
Truex said he was able to pick up time in Turn 2, a.k.a. the “Tunnel Turn”, where other cars seemed to lose time.
