Joey Logano's qualifying effort at Martinsville changed dramatically after joining Team Penske

MARTINSVILLE, Va.—Joey Logano picked up where he left off last fall—atop the pylon at Martinsville Speedway. 

 

After his breakthrough win at the half-mile paper clip-shaped track in October, Logano picked up his fifth pole at NASCAR’s oldest track with a lap of 97.830 mph  (19.356-seconds).

 

For the defending Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion, the pole was his first of the season and the 21st of his career. 

 

“It’s important to win the pole here,” Logano said. “To start up front is safer but you can also run your pace and have a little safer place on pit road as well. 

 

“So when you think of that stuff, it gives you an advantage going into tomorrow’s race. Hopefully, we can turn that into a win.”

 

Logano said the turning point to his success at Martinsville Speedway came when he moved to Team Penske and started working with crew chief Todd Gordon. Since Logano took over driving duties in the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford in 2013, he hasn't qualified worse than 10th. His average qualifying effort at Martinsville improved to 3.07. 

 

“I don’t think it’s by chance,” Logano added. “We’ve definitely worked at it a lot. We’ve talked about it a lot. It’s just been a track for most of my career that I’ve qualified pretty well at. Once I was able to team up with Todd and Team Penske here, I was able to turn really close qualifying efforts into poles.

 

That’s nice, that’s great. This is a challenging place to do it. There’s just so much that goes into each round and each lap. You want to set yourself up for the third round but is it going to be your first lap, your second lap, your third lap that’s your fastest. How your strategy is and what you do in each round makes a difference when you get to your third round…you have to run quite a few laps to land on a fast one.”

 

Aric Almirola posted the second-fastest speed (97.643 mph) followed by Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick to give Ford Motorsports the front two rows.

 

Denny Hamlin posted the top times in the first two rounds but ran four laps in the first time trial and three laps in the second. He believes having the right balance in the No. 11 Fed Ex Toyota will be the key to collecting his sixth clock on Sunday. Hamlin rolls off fifth.

 

“It’s keeping it where I think it has a good balance of short run to long run,” Hamlin said. “I think that we had that in practice. Hopefully, with the changing of track conditions, it’ll be a little bit warmer and we’ll keep that.”

 

William Byron, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr., Daniel Suarez, Clint Bowyer and Jimmie Johnson all transferred to the final round.  

 

It’s the third time this season that three of the four Hendrick Chevrolets have advanced to Round 3. The teams just don’t have the results to show for their efforts with the new aerodynamic package. Johnson, who leads all active drivers with nine wins at Martinsville, isn't sure that qualifying is a harbinger of what’s to come in the STP 500 on Sunday.

 

“Now that there isn’t a ride-height rule, we really haven’t had success since that point in time,” Johnson said. “Even though we have a lot of clocks and have led a lot of laps here, we’re still trying to catch up to where some of these other teams are. To have three cars in the final round of qualifying in the top 12, I think we’ve improved our package from where we were last fall, but we still have a ways to go.

 

“There’s something off. I don’t know if it’s team-related; if it’s the Ford teams and the Toyota teams that internally inside their own organizations have the upper hand or if it’s really manufacturer-related. But we certainly haven’t had the speed and pace that we’d hoped to. And I don’t think it’s just one thing. We have to work in a lot of areas. We’ve been playing catch-up for the last 24 months really.”