BROOKLYN, Mich. — Kurt Busch won his second pole of the season, topping the field Friday at Michigan International Speedway with a lap of 203.361 mph.
“I wanted it bad,” Busch said of winning the pole.
HIs lap was the fastest run at Michigan since Jeff Gordon set the track record of 206.558 mph in 2014.
This is Busch’s 24th career Cup pole. His most recent pole was at Texas.
“The experience level is something that you always have to use when you have it,” Busch said of going after the pole. “A lot of it is the confidence within the team, the car and being with Ford right now. Ford has definitely got all eightcylinders clicking hard. Then it’s up to me. I’ve got to do the job to grab that last tenth-and-a-half (of a second).’’
This is the eighth time in the first 15 races that Stewart-Haas Racing has had a car start on the front row.
Brad Keselowski will join Busch on the front row after a lap of 203.166 mph.
Click here for qualifying results
Kyle Busch will start third with a lap of 203.120 mph. The Toyota driver is the only one in the top seven not in a Ford.
Kevin Harvick, who was fastest in the first two rounds of qualifying, will start fourth after a lap of 202.954 mph.
“Our goal is to run the same speeds throughout each round and if not run your fastest at the end, and we ran the same speed in all three rounds,” Harvick said. “To be honest, I didn’t really expect everybody to pick up two-tenths. I thought we had a little bit to just keep from trying to screw up but in the end I needed to get a little more. It was still a good qualifying effort, so we will just go from there.”
Kyle Larson, who has won the past three Michigan races, failed to advance from the first round. He will start 26th — his worst starting spot this season since starting 38th in the Daytona 500.
“Our car has just been pretty far off, I feel like all day,’’ Larson told Fox Sports 1. “Just really tight. We’ve got some smart people in our race trailer and our race team and we’ll get it worked out.’’
Martin Truex Jr., coming off his win last weekend at Pocono, qualified 17th.
“We just missed it for qualifying today,’’ Truex told FS1.