Carl Edwards, in his first season driving in the Sprint Cup Series for JGR, won the pole Friday for Sunday’s 5-Hour Energy 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway – his first pole since November 2013.
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“Winning cures all and it seems like last week at Kentucky (his second win), the good runs we had there, my foot has felt a lot better”, Busch said Friday before opening Cup practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
JGR put four cars in the top eight for Sundays race: Edwards, Busch, Hamlin, and eighth-place Matt Kenseth. It hardly mattered to the drivers who raved about the product.
“I’ve struggled at this racetrack, so this is big for me personally”, said Edwards, who won his first pole in 22 starts at New Hampshire.
Edwards, who improved dramatically on his previous average starting position of 14.9 at New Hampshire, didn’t believe initially that he had won the pole until he got reassurance from crew chief Darian Grubb. “Everybody is just working hard”.
“I don’t know if he kind of glanced away or what, but when he looked back, I was just right there and couldn’t go anywhere. It’s not the starting spot we wanted, but I think our race vehicle will be pretty good”.
The Middletown, Conn., native has started 13 races at NHMS, including Sprint Cup victories in June 2009 and last September.
Gordon qualified 23rd for Sunday’s race and is still looking for his first win in what is his final, full season.
Brad Keselowski and Logano made it a Team Penske sweep last season. “Not that I’m complaining about it, but it’s not much fun finishing second, being so close to getting trophies and pole flags and all the fun stuff”.
“Just from being behind the wheel at Kentucky, that was probably one of the best races that I’ve been in, in a long time, because we were able to do things we couldn’t do with the vehicle before”.
With NASCAR introducing a last-minute track-specific rules package for Kentucky designed to create more passing, it would be easy to shrug off the results as an anomaly.
The next rules-package change – featuring higher drag and with it perhaps more “pack racing” – comes next week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They’ll try other packages. Whatever turns out to be the best direction, hopefully they go all the way down that path and let it rip..
“I told Tony (Stewart) if he could promise me it would be rough and hooked-up, I’d run”, Larson said. “We didn’t see as much of that as we would have liked and more pack racing”.
“The whole weekend hasn’t gone very well so far”, admitted the 3x New Hampshire race victor. “I think we’ve got a fast Ford for this weekend”. So there will be lots of pit-road debates on tire pressure and two- or four-tire changes, especially late in the race.
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“This is going to be an important race for when we come back”, said Logano. It gets a little challenging sometimes..
