FONTANA - Sunday afternoon at Auto Club Speedway will belong to the 12 drivers involved in NASCAR's Chase for the Cup.
Friday afternoon the show belonged to those who aren't involved in the championship race. Five of the top six qualifiers for Sunday's Pepsi MAX 400 were non-Chase drivers, with Jamie McMurray grabbing the pole position.
McMurray turned in a lap at an average speed of 185.285 mph around the two-mile D-shaped oval, edging Elliott Sadler for the top spot.
"Sometimes you run qualifying laps and you feel like you maybe left a little out there, but really, that's all I had," McMurray said. "I worked really hard for my lap. The track has a lot of speed in it, but it's also really slick. Even in qualifying with brand-new tires, it's really a handful."
Matt Kenseth, the fastest of the Chase qualifiers, will start third Sunday. His Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle will start seventh, and four-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, the season points leader, will go from the eighth position. The rest of the Chase field is scattered all over the place, from Clint Bowyer in 13th to Kurt Busch in 38th.
Denny Hamlin, who is second in the points race, just eight points behind Johnson, will start back in 34th place. Kevin Harvick, third in the Chase, will start 21st. Both had problems finding the handling on their cars.
Kenseth, who is 11th in the Chase and trails Johnson by 149 points, has not been a strong qualifier throughout his career, but his crew improved the car considerably from practice, when he was only 15th fastest.
"That was a great lap for us," said Kenseth, who has three career wins at Fontana. "Obviously, I'm usually not the best qualifier, but we made some adjustments and fixed the things I was complaining about in practice and got a good lap out of it."
McMurray, who has won two of NASCAR's biggest races this season - the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 at Indy - won his fourth pole of the season and second straight at Fontana. He started first and finished 17th in the February race.
In contrast to McMurray's success but lack of consistency this season, Sadler does not even have a Cup ride lined up for next year and is hoping to show something over the next seven races.
"We're definitely working on some stuff, but nothing yet to announce or finalize," he said. "Hopefully this will help - to qualify good this weekend and hopefully run good. We're keeping our fingers crossed, and we're working hard on it."
Former Riverside resident David Gilliland comfortably made the field with a lap at 181.452 in the Taco Bell Ford owned by Doug Yates. With a 32nd-place starting spot wrapped up for Sunday, he'll take on the Nationwide Series today, qualifying in the morning and then competing in the race that starts at 1:30 p.m.
Weekend races
