Apr 17, 2015 4 min read

Matt Kenseth, a three-time winner at Bristol Motor Speedway, won the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Spring Cup series race.

Kenseth turned a lap at 128.632 mph in Friday in qualifying to earn the top starting spot. It is Kenseth’s first pole of the season and 13th of his career.

Brad Keselowski qualified second at 128.442. He was followed by Carl Edwards as JGR drivers took two of the top three spots, and three of the top five when Denny Hamlin qualified behind Kevin Harvick.

Kenseth has won the August race at Bristol three times in his career, but has never won on the .533-mile concrete bullring in the spring.

He takes 51-race winless streak into Sunday.

RCR moves on with interim crew chief: Richard Childress Racing had the foresight to send an interim crew chief to a test session this week with Ryan Newman, a move that could pay dividends this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.

RCR lost its bid to overturn penalties levied against Newman’s team for allegedly manipulating tires at a race last month at California. Although an appeals panel reduced some of the sanctions, the six-week suspensions for crew chief Luke Lambert and two other team members were upheld.

Unsure if the organization will take its case to NASCAR’s chief appellate officer, team owner Richard Childress sent Todd Parrott to Bristol to crew chief Newman. Parrott attended a three-day test earlier this week at Kentucky Speedway with the No. 31 team and got a jumpstart on working with Newman and the crew.

Parrott, who is RCR’s director of competition for the second-tier Xfinity Series, gathered the crew in the team truck for a pep talk in case the Thursday appeal was unsuccessful.

Parrott guided Dale Jarrett to the 1999 title and has 31 Cup wins as a crew chief.

Hunter-Reay penalized: Ryan Hunter-Reay vehemently disagreed with the penalty IndyCar levied against him for a three-car accident at New Orleans.

The series docked the Indianapolis 500 winner three points and placed him on probation for three races for what IndyCar called “avoidable contact” in last Sunday’s race.

“I think it’s BS and I told them that,” Hunter-Reay told The Indianapolis Star Friday at Long Beach.

“I’ve had a lot of guys come to me, a lot of drivers come to me, a lot of ex-drivers come to me, and tell me the same thing … they all disagree with the call.”

Simon Pagenaud ran off course as he raced three-wide with Hunter-Reay and Sebastien Bourdais following a late restart. When Pagenaud re-entered the racing surface, he slammed into Hunter-Reay, whose car briefly lifted as it hit Bourdais.

All three cars slid off course, with Pagenaud and Bourdais hitting tire barriers. Pagenaud maintained Hunter-Reay ran him off the track; Hunter-Reay insisted Pagenaud ran out of racing surface.

Changes to IndyCar aero kits: IndyCar is mandating changes to the new Chevrolet and Honda aero kits for this weekend’s Grand Prix of Long Beach to reduce the amount of debris flying off the cars.

IndyCar asked Chevrolet to add a tether to the winglets from the assembly or remove the parts all together and wants Honda to add reinforcements to its rear wheel guards for Sunday’s race.

The new aero kits caused problems through the first two races by breaking off and littering the track or flying over the catch fences.

A woman standing near a concession at the St. Petersburg race suffered a fractured skull when she was hit by debris and the race had numerous cautions to clean up broken pieces.