Ricky Stenhouse Jr. continued to traverse his recent wave of momentum, winning the pole for Saturday night’s Top Gear 300 Nationwide Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Stenhouse, who scored his first career Nationwide Series victory last weekend at Iowa Speedway, qualified ninth on Thursday for his Sprint Cup debut in tomorrow’s Coca-Cola 600. It is the third career series pole for the 2010 NNS rookie of the year. The pole is the 13th NNS pole for Roush Fenway at Charlotte.
“We have a really fast Fastenal Ford Mustang for tonight’s race and it’s great to be starting in the front,” said Stenhouse. “All three of the Fastenal fleet will be starting in the top five and hopefully we’ll all be up there racing for the win at the end.”
Matt Kenseth – making his first NNS start of the season qualified his No. 16 Fastenal Ford third and Carl Edwards will start fifth in the No. 60 Fastenal Ford.
It is the second pole of the 2011 season for Stenhouse and his first in four races at CMS. It is the sixth NNS pole for Roush Fenway this season and the 10th NASCAR pole for Roush Fenway in 2011. It marked the 13th time Roush Fenway has won a Nationwide pole at the 1.5-mile track of Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“It’s been a crazy week for sure,” added Stenhouse. “I feel like our Nationwide program was where we could win, it was just a matter of putting everything together toward the end of last year. These are the same (No. 6 team) guys that went through the battles with us last year and came out a lot better off. I won Rookie of the Year with them. We wanted to get a race win and get it under our belt, and now we can focus on championship racing.”
Roush Fenway Racing PR
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