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ALL-STAR: Kyle Busch On Pole
Kyle Busch claimed the pole for Saturday night’s Sprint All-Star Race...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted May 20, 2011   Concord, NC
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Kyle Busch captured the covered pole position for Saturday’s $1 million-to-win NASCAR Sprint All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, knocking off Clint Bowyer with a late charge to glory.

Busch lapped the 1.5-mile track at 135.916 miles per hour in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, while Bowyer’s speed was 135.377 mph, fast enough to put the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing on the outside of Row 1.

“Fast car, fast guys on pit road,” said Busch. “ ... Hopefully, we can continue that tomorrow night.”

The unique qualifying format requires drivers to complete three laps around the 1.5-mile CMS oval, with a four-tire pit stop on Lap 2. Thus, the speeds were in the low 130-mph range, instead of the low 190-mph range, which is what a typical one-lap qualifying run would be.

Row 2 was an all Roush Fenway Racing affair, with Greg Biffle qualifying third and Carl Edwards fourth. On the inside of Row 3 will be Mark Martin, flanked by Tony Stewart.

“Man, Doug Yates gave me a motor tonight,” said Biffle. “And the car was really right.”

Positions seven through 10 were Kasey Kahne, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman.
Earlier, David Ragan won the pole for tomorrow night’s Sprint Showdown, the last-chance race that will allow the top-two finishers to advance to the Sprint All-Star Race.

Ragan blistered the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway quad oval with a lap of 191.680 miles per hour in his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.

“We needed a little bit of momentum back on our side after the last couple of weeks,” said Ragan.

AJ Allmendinger ran a lap of 191.469 mph in his No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford, which placed him on the outside of Row 1 for Saturday’s race and give the Blue Oval Boys a sweep of the front row.

Paul Menard was third in his No. 27 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. He’ll be flanked by the No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge of Brad Keselowski.

Jeff Burton and Marcos Ambrose will start from Row 3, followed by Martin Truex Jr., David Gilliland, Joey Logano and Brian Vickers.

Both the Sprint Showdown winner and runner-up will make the All-Star field, along with the winner of the Sprint Fan Vote. That means there will be 21 drivers racing for the $1 million All-Star purse.

SPEED will have full coverage of both races, beginning at 7 p.m. ET Saturday night.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.

ALL-STAR Watch Presented By Lowe's - Let's Build Something Together
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