Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford team earned the pole for Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as Team Penske swept the front-row in Coors Light qualifying for the second-consecutive weekend.
“To have a Penske front row the last two weekends at two completely different race tracks just goes to show how hard these guys have been working,” said Logano. “When you work hard those results come. We obviously haven’t won on Sunday yet, so we’ve got to figure out the big show, but we’ve had some good speed in our cars. We got blocked on the race track a little bit and didn’t get our first run in very well. We went back out and were only 18th after the first segment and then you kind of get to reset – take a deep breath, adjust your race car, cool it off the best you can – and we were able to go out there and run again and win the last two segments. This Shell-Pennzoil team is a bunch of hard-working guys. It’s so much fun to work with them. We’re here to win this year and we’re trying to prove it.”
The three-segment elimination qualifying session began in a less than ideal manner for Logano as his first lap was impeded by a competitor, which landed Logano initially out of the top-24. He rebounded to post the 18th fastest lap of the first session.
The second-year Team Penske driver would make a marked improvement during the second session as he topped the speed charts to move to the final session. In that final five-minute dash, Logano again bested the field of 12 drivers as he earned his first Coors Light Pole of the season and the eighth of his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career.
