Tony Stewart is coming off of a weekend where he made headlines for what he did and said outside of the race car. This weekend he is starting off letting his driving speak for him as he laid down the fastest qualifying lap during Sprint Cup Qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Stewart circled the mile and a half surface of AMS in 29.787 seconds which is a speed of 186.121 mph. The closest competitor to Stewart was Greg Biffle whose 29.863 second lap at 185.648 mph puts him on the outside of the front row for Sunday night’s ADVOCARE 500. Kyle Busch starts on the inside of row 2 after his 185.493 mph lap that took 29.888 seconds. To Busch’s outside will be Matt Kenseth who laid down a 29.916 second lap at a speed of 185.319 mph. Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin round out the front three rows of the starting grid.
This pole win marks Stewarts 14th career pole in 489 Cup Series starts. The pole win is his first of 2012 and qualifies him for the Shootout at the beginning of Speedweeks in 2013. This is also Stewart’s first pole in 26 career races at Atlanta. Josh Wise is the fastest qualifying rookie. Other notable qualifiers – Denny Hamlin 7th, Jimmie Johnson 8th, Kasey Kahne 11th, Carl Edwards 12th, Brad Keselowski 21st, Danica Patrick 23rd, Kevin Harvick 24th, Clint Bowyer 30th, Dale Earnhardt Jr. 35th and JJ Yeley 43rd.
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