Kahne captures the pole at Martinsville

[media-credit id=5 align=”alignright” width=”234″][/media-credit]Following Sprint Cup qualifying, Kasey Kahne won the pole for the Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. This marks Kahne’s 24^th career Coors Light Pole Award and his first pole at Martinsville.

“It was a really solid lap,” he says. “The team did a good job yesterday.  We didn’t have the most speed yesterday but I felt like the car was balanced really well.  I felt pretty stable going around the track. It was the same in qualifying today.  It was a good lap.  First pole here for myself.  It’s a tough track to qualify.  It’s a tough track to race, always has been one of my tougher ones over the years.  I’m glad we can start up front and have a great pit stall in that number one stall.  I think that helps throughout the whole race with track position.  Hopefully we will have a solid day tomorrow.  That is what we need to do.  We have had great Friday and Saturday’s and just haven’t put together a Sunday yet.”

Kahne drove a lap of 19.496 seconds, to beat Kevin Harvick by 16 hundredths of a second.

“The guys have done a great job this weekend,” Harvick says. “The track conditions have changed a lot since the beginning of practice until where we are now.  Obviously the race conditions are where we will have to take a little bit of a guess like we did for qualifying based on the rubber being on the track from yesterday.  They have done a good job and I just slipped the tires off both corners a little bit but all-in-all they have stepped the program up this year.”

Four-time Martinsville Speedway winner Denny Hamlin qualified third with a lap of 19.521 seconds.

“We didn’t really show a lot of good qualifying speed or really front end speed of a long run yesterday,” he says. “That’s good for us to be that close and after only a couple laps. I feel like once the race gets into a groove and gets going — things get strung out, I think we’ll be pretty good.”

Clint Bowyer and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five.

Brian Vickers, making his second start of the season, starts sixth. He is followed by Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, seven-time Martinsville winner Jeff Gordon and Joey Logano. Six-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson qualified 22^nd while points leader Greg Biffle is 26^th.

Tony Raines was disqualified from the starting field after his car was found to be too low in post-qualifying inspection. That moved J.J. Yeley into the 43-car field.