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BUSCH: Kyle Busch on pole at Darlington
Young upstart Kyle Busch garnered his first career Busch series pole today at Darlington Raceway. Busch bested the field by posting a lap of 168.619 mph. "It was a lot of fun," said Busch of his time trial lap. "But also a lot of white knuckles ...
Edited: Apr 16, 2008, 12:40 AM
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Young upstart Kyle Busch garnered his first career Busch series pole today at Darlington Raceway. Busch bested the field by posting a lap of 168.619 mph.
"It was a lot of fun," said Busch of his time trial lap. "But also a lot of white knuckles it was probably the most we could have got out of the car."
Busch, the younger brother of Cup star Kurt Busch, wasn't dismayed by the new SAFER wall system teams first saw this morning at Darlington.
"There was a little bit if difference," said Busch. "The new safer barrier was different than I am accustomed to. Coming down into turn one is like a real narrow valley, off of turn two it's not too tight. As you let it drift up in turn three and four you really have to woe it down. It's going to be a lot of tight quarters racing."
The walls cut 26-inches out of the racing groove and proved to be tricky this morning, with the cars of Justin Ashburn and Damon Lusk wrecking during morning practice.
Kasey Kahne starts from the outside pole with a lap of 168.602 mph. Kahne has certainly proved he is able this season, in four attempts he has started within the top-10 in all four Busch events. Today marks his best starting spot so far this year.
"We have a real good qualifying program," said Kahne. "Great Clips has done a great job, we missed that (the pole) by 3/1000ths to Kurt Busch, seems like we have been second a lot. But we are getting real close."
Kahne also commented that the SAFER system affected the track, but he was still optimistic for a good race Saturday "You still run it in the same way. I think it might have slowed down. You have to be careful getting up to the wall. The wall is the closest in turn three and four."
Kenny Wallace scores his best qualifying attempt since November of 2001 with third place.
"It's great for us," said Wallace. "A real boost to the team."
Cup regular, Greg Biffle, who decided to run a full season of Busch racing this year to aide his Nextel Cup effort starts fourth.
"The car was really good across one and two," said Biffle who charted a lap of 168.014 mph. "It just didn't turn there in three and four like it had been all day. Maybe I was on the brakes a little bit too much and didn't let up soon enough. I definitely had a car good enough for the pole."
Jason Leffler completes the top-5 with a lap of 167.991 mph.
"We ran faster in qualifying that we did in practice," said Leffler. "But I'm a little baffled why we're a half second slower than the car on the pole. I don't know where we lost that much speed, but we'll work on it and maybe we'll get our car driving good for the race."
Forty-five cars attempted to qualify for the forty-three car field. Failing to make the show were the teams of Norm Benning and Eddie Beahr.
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