Kenseth captures the Coke Zero 400 pole at Daytona

[media-credit name=”David Yeazell” align=”alignright” width=”236″][/media-credit]Daytona, FL. – Matt Kenseth captured the pole for Saturday nights Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway with a lap of 192.386 mph, 46.781 seconds.

“Our lap was obviously a good one.  It was faster than the rest.  I had very little to do with it, so qualifying at the speedway races is all about the car and the engine and those guys did a spectacular job at Roush all year long really in preparing our speedway cars.” Hamlin said.

The Daytona 500 winner is trying to become the first driver since Bobby Allison in 1982 to sweep the season races at Daytona.

“Yeah, that would be pretty cool.  I never thought, especially early in my career with speedway racing I didn’t feel I was particularly good at it.” Kenseth said about tying Allison. “So certainly I think for our team and everything our confidence is high, but this race is still kind of a crapshoot. You’re never sure exactly what’s gonna happen.”

Tony Stewart qualified second with a lap of lap was 192.361 mph but his time was disallowed.  NASCAR said an open cooling hose was found pointed inside the cockpit.  Stewart will start 42nd.

“You asked me if I did anything different, I said ‘I held it wide open.’ You asked if they did anything special I said ‘yeah, they gave me full throttle this time.’ So my reward is I get a Coke Zero for this. That is well worth holding it wide open for.” Stewart said when he was asked what they did to his car.

Ryan Newman qualified second, Kasey Kahne third, Greg Biffle fourth and Jeff Gordon rounded out the top-5.

Denny Hamlin, who is having back spasms, qualified his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota 24th and is not planning on having any driver stand-by.