Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the pole for this afternoon’s STP 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway.
Stenhouse, who went out 33rd of 43 cars, ran 176.916 miles per hour in his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Mustang to claim his third pole of the season and seventh in 91 career Nationwide Series starts.
Austin Dillon had a great lap in the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, running 176.783 mph. That was good enough for second place.
Sam Hornish Jr. was third at 176.367 mph in the first of the two Penske Racing Dodges, followed by Kyle Busch in his own Toyota and Parker Kligerman in a second Penske entry.
The second five was Brian Scott, Mike Bliss, Cole Whitt, Ryan Truex and Brendan Gaughan.
With 17 races in the books, Elliott Sadler leads Dillon by three points and defending series champion Stenhouse by 16. If Sadler, Dillon, Stenhouse or Hornish wins today’s race, they will claim a $100,000 bonus as part of Nationwide’s Dash 4 Cash program.
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
Receive your weekly recap of all the happenings around the world of sports.