Joey Logano won the pole for this afternoon’s Royal Purple 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Auto Club Speedway, turning in a blistering lap of 178.984 miles per hour in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
The pole was Logano’s second of the season and 18th of his career in 92 Nationwide starts. JGR has won seven consecutive NNS races at Auto Club Speedway.
Starting on the outside of Row 1 will be the No. 31 Turner Motorsports Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier, with a lap of 177.196 mph.
Third fast was 2010 series champion Brad Keselowski, who ran 177.109 mph in the No. 22 Penske Racing Dodge. Then came Austin Dillon, 176.928 mph in the first of the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolets.
Series points leader Elliott Sadler struggled all through practice, but ran a lap of 176.904 mph, which when he went out was 3.5 mph faster than anyone else. That put his RCR Chevy on the inside of Row 3, where he’ll be flanked by Kenny Wallace.
Sadler, winner of two of the season’s first four races, comes into this afternoon’s event with a lead of 25 points over defending series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and 29 over Stenhouse’s teammate, Trevor Bayne.
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.
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