Carl Edwards secures second straight pole with Bristol flyer

Carl Edwards won the pole for the second consecutive week, using an average single-lap speed of 127.997 mph to claim the top starting position for Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.

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He will be joined on the front row by teammate Matt Kenseth. Fellow JGR drivers Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch will line up fourth and fifth, respectively.

"Obviously, all of the JGR cars were fast again so thanks to everyone who’s building these things and TRD (Toyota Racing Development) with the engines. In the first round we were pretty good we thought and then the second round we tried something and we were too tight and then the third round we were a little too loose really," Kenseth said. 

"We were just that much off, but overall it was a great day and we’ll still get a good pit stop and a good place to start and hopefully we’ll get it driving good tomorrow and we can race them on Sunday.”

The pole is Edwards’ second of the season, 18th of his Sprint Cup Series career and third at Bristol. Edwards has three career wins at the short track with the most recent coming in 2014.

“That’s pretty cool to run under a 15 second lap. Everybody on this team has been working so hard and you see it – JGR cars have been running up front every week,” Edwards said.

“The trick is not to watch (the other cars go out). It means so much to get a pole, especially at a place like this. There is a lot of pride on the line at a place like Bristol.”

Hamlin was fastest in Friday’s lone practice session, while all our JGR drivers posted speeds in the Top-10.

The rest of the top 12: Joey Logano (third), Jimmie Johnson (sixth), Kevin Harvick (seventh), Martin Truex Jr. (eighth), A.J. Allmendinger (ninth), Trevor Bayne (10th), Kasey Kahne (11th) and Brad Keselowski (12th).

Round 2

The 10-minute second round went incident-free and all four JGR drivers showed their prowess, all posting speeds in the top-six.

Kyle Busch led the way with an average single-lap speed of 127.258 mph as no one in the second round went faster than they did in the first round.

Busch was followed by Logano, Edwards, Kenseth, Keselowski and Hamlin.

Also advancing to the final round were Johnson, Harvick, Truex, Bayne, Kahne and Allmendinger.

“I like what it did at part-throttle,” Johnson said over his radio after posting his fastest lap. “Just a little much off. I don’t know how to counter that.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who will start 20th and failed to advance to the final round, was disappointed in his performance.

“We’ll just have to take advantage of doing things differently in those early laps,” Earnhardt said. “We just couldn’t back it up.”

Earnhardt was seventh-fastest in Friday’s practice session.

Round 1

With track temperatures more than 20 degrees F warmer than in practice earlier Friday, most Cup teams began the 20-minute first-round qualifying session remaining on pit road.

In the first 10 minutes, only eight cars had taken laps, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. leading the way.

With nine minutes left, Ty Dillon, substituting for Tony Stewart, spun off the exit of Turn 2 and slid down the backstretch and into the back of Landon Cassill’s No. 38 Ford.

“Mashed in pretty good on the front,” Dillon’s spotter, Bob Jeffrey said on the radio. Dillon replied: “Yeah, I hit the damn apron coming up to speed.”

Logano ended up leading the session with an average single-run lap at 128.408 mph. He was followed by all four JGR drivers – Edwards, Hamlin, Kenseth and Kyle Busch.

Among those who failed to advance out of the first round were Kurt Busch, Danica Patrick, Kyle Larson and Ty Dillon.

“It was probably one of my most embarrassing moments in racing,” Dillon said after the session was over. “I feel bad I tore it up in qualifying. Just disappointed in myself.”