Quicken Loans 400 Qualifying Report

Snickers Peanut Butter Squared Racing

Date: June 16, 2012
Event: Quicken Loans 400 Qualifying (Round 15 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Location: Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn (2-mile oval)
Pole Winner: Marcos Ambrose of Richard Petty Motorsports (35.426 seconds at 203.241 mph)
Kyle Busch: 34th (36.543 seconds at 197.028 mph)

Kyle Busch qualified 34th for Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn. The driver of the No. 18 Snickers Peanut Butter Squared Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) turned a lap of 36.543 seconds at 197.028 mph on the 2-mile oval.

“We were just way too loose on our qualifying run,” said Busch, who won at Michigan last August. “I was hoping for a better qualifying lap since track position on a newly repaved track will be important. We don’t know what to expect with the left side tire they are changing for tomorrow. We get a practice later on to try it out and hopefully we can go out there and learn some things with our Snickers Peanut Butter Squared Camry for tomorrow.”

Busch’s JGR teammates – Joey Logano in the No. 20 Toyota Camry and Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Toyota Camry – qualified ninth and 11th, respectively. Logano turned a lap of 35.777 seconds at 201.247 mph, while Hamlin stopped the clock in 35.842 seconds at 200.882 mph.

Marcos Ambrose captured his first career Sprint Cup pole by posting a lap of 35.426 seconds at 203.241 mph, shattering the previous Sprint Cup Series track record at Michigan of 37.609 seconds at 194.232 mph set in 2005 by Ryan Newman. All but three drivers in the 43-car field posted speeds faster than Newman’s old mark.

Ambrose is just the fourth driver in Sprint Cup Series history to win the pole with a lap of more than 200 mph and the first to do so at a track other than Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway or Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. The only other drivers in Sprint Cup Series history to win a pole at more than 200 mph are Benny Parsons, Cale Yarborough and Bill Elliott, who was last driver to accomplish the feat when he took the top spot in July 1987 at Talladega with a lap of 203.827 mph. Ambrose’s speed of 203.241 mph is the 11th-fastest pole-winning speed in Sprint Cup Series history.

Kevin Harvick will start on the outside of row one as he timed in at 35.637 seconds at 202.037 mph, while Greg Biffle was third at 35.676 seconds at 201.816 mph. Kasey Kahne (35.693 seconds at 201.720 mph) and Newman (35.737 seconds at 201.472 mph) rounded out the top five.

The two drivers who failed to qualify for the Quicken Loans 400 were Stacy Compton and David Stremme.

As far as manufacturers went, Ford took the top spot via Ambrose’s pole run. Chevrolet was next-best at the hands of Harvick, while Toyota was the third-fastest make thanks to ninth-fastest Logano. A.J. Allmendinger, who qualified 20th, (36.010 seconds at 199.944 mph) carried the flag for Dodge.

The Quicken Loans 400 gets underway at 1 p.m. EDT on Sunday with live coverage provided by TNT beginning with a pre-race show at noon.