Kurt Busch wins pole at Las Vegas

Las Vegas may be home to Kurt Busch, but his hometown track was just as welcoming in qualifying for the Kobalt 400 on Friday.
For the second straight week, Busch won the pole at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after turning in a speed of 196.328 mph and time of 27.505 seconds in the final round of qualifying for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Busch broke the track record in the opening round, kicking up the speed to 196.378 mph and lowering the time to 27.498.
Even with the success, Busch nearly missed out on having a shot at the pole during the second round of three-round qualifying.
“I overdrove the car in Turn 2 in the second round,” said Busch, who also won the pole at LVMS in 2010. “We had to do an extra run, and it made for an extra pressure-cooker situation. All in all, you just have to play it cool and rely on your team members.
“The way the session unfolded for us, we were in perfect position by the time we got to Round 3.”
With only five minutes available to make the best possible lap in the final round, Busch made his count, beating Joey Logano by nearly seven-hundredths of a second. Logano ran his lap around the 1.5-mile oval in 27.572 seconds and 195.851 mph.
“Two poles in a row is reason to celebrate,” Busch said. “It symbolizes our hard work during the offseason to come out of the box and sit on two poles at two mile-and-a-halves right away.”
Logano rebounded from a 26th-place qualifying run at Atlanta last week, the first with NASCAR’s new low-downforce package. The driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion said any falloff with the tires is to be determined when the 267-lap race gets under way Sunday.
“We saw some falloff yesterday when we were in race trim,” Logano said. “Today we never came out of qualifying trim. It was one lap, one lap, one lap.
“I think there will be more (tire) falloff than there was last year. It won’t be huge like last week, but there will be some, for sure.”
Matt Kenseth, a three-time race winner at Las Vegas, just missed passing Logano’s time, but still qualified third with a 27.582 at 195.780. Logano’s Penske Racing teammate, Brad Keselowski, will join Kenseth in Row 2 after qualifying fourth (27.598,195.666).
“We had a pretty decent day, just didn’t have enough at the end,” said Keselowski, looking for his second Vegas win in three years (2014). “I tried too hard to get the last little bit of pickup, and it wasn’t quite there.”
Austin Dillon and defending Kobalt 400 race winner Kevin Harvick will make up the third row. Aric Almirola, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Jimmie Johnson and A.J. Allmendinger completed the top 12 starters.

Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports..