Martin Truex Jr. will be the polesitter tomorrow night in the Go Bowling 400 in Kansas Speedway. Truex barely edged out fellow Toyota driver Matt Kenseth by .0053 sec. This is Truex’s first pole at Kansas Speedway, first pole of the season, and eighth of his career.
“Thought it was good,” said Truex. “Feels good to be getting another pole – it’s been a long time. I think I’ve got a XFINITY Series pole here at Kansas back in about ’05, so it’s been a little while here at Kansas and it’s been a few years in the Cup Series altogether. We’ve been really close with our Furniture Row team the past few years. We’ve qualified second a handful of times and been just right there at it. We’ve led the first round. We’ve led the second round. We just haven’t quite figured out how to lead that third round, so today just really proud of everyone at Furniture Row Racing. Bass Pro Shops/ TRACKER Boats Toyota was really good all day long and just can’t say enough about my team and what we have going on right now. Our Toyotas are really fast. Everybody at TRD (Toyota Racing Development) is giving us great engines and just doing all the things it takes to have fast race cars and that’s what it takes to get poles. Excited to be here. Excited for all of our guys and Barney (Visser, team owner) and just everyone in general for all they do and hopefully we’ll be able to finish the deal here tomorrow night.”
Kenseth was fastest in the first two rounds of qualifying, but Truex just barely edged him out. This is Kenseth’s third front row start at Kansas as he is aiming for his third career win at the 1.5-mile oval.
“I think you’re going to see a good race,” Kenseth said. “The track’s got really wide already today. Just for practice, it seems to be packing a lot of rubber in. I think you’re going to see cars all the way up against the fence. I think it’s going to be a good race.”
Keeping up with the Toyota theme, Denny Hamlin was third quickest in the final round. Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski will round out the top five.
Kyle Busch will be gunning for his first career Kansas Speedway win from the sixth starting position. Ryan Blaney continues an impressive rookie season and will roll off seventh. Ryan Newman, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Trevor Bayne will round out the top 10.
The 2016 Go Bowling 400 at Kansas Speedway will begin at 7:30PM ET on FS1.
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Promoted to editor in 2013, Summer is one of Frontstretch’s fast-rising young talents. While contributing to social media efforts, she also writes the weekly "Up To Speed" column. A Kansas native, Summer graduated with a Bachelor's in Journalism and Mass Communications in 2015. She also contributes to other media outlets such as Kickin' The Tires.
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