Carl Edwards/No.19 Stanley Toyota is the NASCAR Coors Lite pole winner for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Toyota/Save Mart 350 race at Sonoma Raceway. His lap was 95.777 mph/74.799 seconds. Edwards narrowly edged last year’s pole sitter, AJ Allmendinger/No.47 Ralphs/Kingsford Chevrolet, who had just run what was then the top time-95.676 mph/74.878 seconds. Edwards had also been the fastest driver in the first qualifying session.
It was the nineteenth career pole position for Edwards, and third pole this season. He was presented with his Sonoma Raceway DriveSafe award in Victory Circle. This is the first pole for Edwards at Sonoma Raceway.
“The car is fast. We’re out here in Toyota country here, in a Toyota for the Toyota. I’m really excited. It’s easy to mess up. I’m glad we hung on for the pole and just really excited. You’re looking at the guy who wrecked out last year. It’s one race I really look forward to all year. There’s no other track that you get to drive like this. You really get to – no lap is perfect here, like I said, you’re bouncing off of kerbs, you’re sliding around, you’re spinning the tires, you’re locking up brakes and this is what driving a race car is about.”
Allmendinger said It was a struggle yesterday. This is definitely a big gain from where we were yesterday. There’s no pressure on me. Edwards has won here before. Best I’ve done is seventh. All we can do is our best. This is a big weekend for our sponsors, who are locally based – Clorox in Oakland and Ralphs here.”
For Sonoma’s qualifying, there were two qualifying sessions. In the first session all 41 cars ran, with the fastest 12 advancing to the second round to set the final field.
Third through fifth were Martin Truex Jr/No.78 Furniture Row Toyota; Kurt Busch/No.41 Monster Energy/Haas Automation Chevrolet; and Kyle Larson/No.42 Target Chevrolet.
Sixth through twelfth were Denny Hamlin/No.11 FedEx Cares Toyota; Joey Logano/No.22 Shell Pennzoil Ford;Kyle Busch/No.18 M&M’s 75th Anniversary Toyota; Paul Menard/No.27 Richmond/Menards Chevrolet; Tony Stewart/No.14 Code 3 Assoc/Mobil 1 Chevrolet, who was finally getting better luck this weekend; his teammate, Danica Patrick/No.10 Nature’s Bakery Chevrolet; and Brad Keselowski/No.2 Alliance Truck Parts Ford.
Current points leader, Kevin Harvick/No.4 Mobil 1 Chevrolet qualified twenty-fifth. He ran seventeenth and eighteenth in the first and second practice sessions.
There are 36 Charter teams, which have guaranteed starting positions for their drivers. In the 41-car field, one unlucky driver didn’t make the 40-car field. In this case, it was Cody Ware/No.55 CarPort Empire Chevrolet.
I misspoke previously, saying there were no Rookies in the 2016 Cup field. There are three: Ryan Blaney/No.21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Tire & Auto Center Ford, Brian Scott.No.44 Safeway/Blue Emu Ford and Young Chase Elliott/No.24 3M Chevrolet, who took over the seat formerly occupied by retired NASCAR Cup Champion, Jeff Gordon. Elliott missed out making the top 12 for Cup qualifying, but he was the top qualifying Rookie for Sunday’s race, starting sixteenth. And icing on the cake for the son of NASCAR Champion, Bill Elliot – he has the pole for Saturday afternoon’s Chevy’s Fresh Mex 200 NASCAR K&N Pro Series, West race.
For the race, there are 20 Chevrolets, eleven Fords and nine Toyotas. Chevrolet currently leads the Manufacturer points with 606, followed by Ford with 559 and Toyota with 623.
Matt Kenseth’s No 20 Dollar General Toyota accumulated its fourth warning Saturday during pre qualifying inspection. As a result, the team will have last pit stall selection for Sunday’s race. Now the total reverts back to zero.
Jeff Gordon, retired NASCAR Champion and now Fox Sports TV analyst at NASCAR, is ending his first season in the TV booth with this weekend’s race. He met with the media Saturday morning, before calling the qualifying session. After this weekend, he’ll be able to spend more time with his family. He said he was flattered, in response to questions re is plans for the rest of this season, to have his name associated with ABC’s “Live” morning TV show which he has co-hosted in the past. “My priority is FOX and FOX Sports and NASCAR, so I will definitely be back in the booth next year. If there was something that would fit into and around that, great. I don’t know if that’s a reality, but it’s been really interesting kind of seeing that unfold. I really don’t have anything I can say about it.”
Gordon has a book coming out in October. “It’s been an amazing experience for me to reminisce with my stepdad (John Bickford) over all these great stories that have never been told before, including things with Bill and Gail Davis, to my experience at Hendrick and the success and things off the track and family and divorce and all these things that are all kind of brought in a way that I think has never been done before. So, yeah, looking forward to it. I mean, this summer, when summer is over, that’s what I’ll be ramping up towards, and being at the racetrack. So, looking forward to it.”
Saturday afternoon’s K&N race starts at 1pm local time, and Sunday’s Sprint Cup race starts at noon Pacific Daylight Time, airing live on Fox Sports 1, as well as PRN Radio, Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and NASCAR.com.