Martin Truex, Jr. earned his second consecutive second-place qualifying position and Furniture Row Racing teammate Erik Jones qualified 15th for Sunday’s Pocono 400 at 2.5-mile three-turn Pocono Raceway.
Truex will start the race in the No. 78 Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota Camry on the outside of the front row for the third time this season. Jones will line up the No. 77 GameStop/Cars 3: Driven to Win Toyota Camry on the inside of Row 8.
Truex also again missed out on the pole position to Kyle Busch by 0.171-of-a-second with a third-round lap of 50.408 seconds at 178.543 mph. Busch ran at 50.237 at 179.151.
Truex was sixth-fastest in Round 2 (50.578 at 177.943) and ninth-fastest in the first round with a lap of 50.980 at 176.540. It was his 11th top-10 qualifying effort in the first 14 races.
“We had a heckuva day,” said Truex. “We had a steering issue in practice and only made two mock qualifying runs. The car never felt comfortable and I had a hard time hitting my lines. But the Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota sure picked up in qualifying. We got better in each session and just came up a little short for the pole. I didn’t get everything out of the tunnel turn (turn 3). Starting up front will help us by getting a good pit stall.”
Jones struggled with the Camry’s handling in both sessions. He was 15th in the second round (51.075 at 176.211) and 12th in the first round (51.151 at 175.950).
“The No. 77 GameStop/Cars 3: Driven to Win Toyota was just loose in all three corners,” said Jones of his second session lap. “I had two choices: to drive through the loose or under-drive the car. I decided to try to drive through and it just didn’t work out. Starting 15th is not where we want to be Sunday morning but there are 400 miles to make up for it.”
Qualifying positions 3-12 went to Matt Kenseth, Ryan Blaney, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Jamie McMurray, Joey Logano, Ryan Newman, Michael McDowell, and Kevin Harvick.
Sunday’s Axalta Presents the Pocono 400 will air live beginning at 1 p.m. MT (3 p.m. ET) on Fox Sports 1, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio channel 90 and MRN.