Martin Truex Jr. wins pole at Martinsville, Logano lines up second – Nascar

Logano took his close call with a fourth straight pole philosophically.

“So close to getting that fourth pole in a row,” Logano said. “It would have been pretty cool to be able to say you did that, but it’s been a great streak … Starting up front is important here at Martinsville. We’ve proven that before. We’ll be able to get a good pit stall, which is a lot of opportunity to take advantage of that here.

“It gives us a good start to get a good rhythm into this long race and get our car tuned up to where we want to, and get the grandfather clock when we’re done. We’re not in the business of getting poles. We’re in the business of winning races. A lot of times that takes winning the pole, but in general we want to win the race.”

Neither Truex nor Logano has won at Martinsville, but the Chase driver starting third, Jimmie Johnson (97.840 mph), has eight victories at the track. In addition to Logano and Johnson, Chase drivers and Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch earned the seventh, eighth and ninth spots on the grid, respectively.

The three remaining Chase drivers in the Round of 8 failed to advance to the final round. Matt Kenseth will start 17th on Sunday, with Kevin Harvick 20th and Kurt Busch 23rd.

Notes: AJ Allmendinger, runner-up at Martinsville in April, will start fourth, his second-best qualifying effort of the season (he was second on the grid for the road course race at Sonoma in June) … Chase Elliott and Tony Stewart will line up fifth and sixth, respectively … Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wheel-hopped into the Turn 1 wall just over six minutes into the first round on Friday and will start Sunday’s race in a backup car … Austin Dillon also scraped the wall in the first round, but his team was attempting to repair the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Eliminated from the Chase last week at Talladega, Dillon will start 32nd on Sunday.