Jeff Gordon wins pole for NASCAR finale

Jeff Gordon

Jeff Gordon may be out of the running for the Chase for the Sprint Cup, but he's in great position to pick up his fifth win of the season, winning the Coors Light Pole Award at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday night.

Gordon, whose pole is the 200th in Hendrick Motorsports history, posted the best speed in the third round of qualifying at a 180.747 mph to edge Hendrick engine counterpart and Stewart-Haas Racing driver Kurt Busch (180.632 mph).

Eliminated Chase drivers that still have teammates in contention, Matt Kenseth (180.294 mph) and Brad Keselowski (179.994 mph), will start behind them in the second row.

Chase drivers Kevin Harvick (179.946 mph), Denny Hamlin (179.348 mph) and Joey Logano (179.259 mph) will start fifth, eighth and ninth, respectively.

Kevin Harvick

Ryan Newman was the only Chase driver not to advance past round two, his best speed of 178.241 mph saddling the Richard Childress Racing driver with a starting position of 21st. He finished 17th in last year's race after starting 15th.

A pair of Cup practices are on the slate for Saturday, with drivers scheduled to roll off at noon ET (FS1) and 3 p.m. ET (FS2). Be sure to tune in to Sunday's season finale at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN to find out who will be crowned Sprint Cup Series champion.

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – POLE WINNER
"We had a great Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet but the bottom just wasn’t the perfect place for us to run. I could feel the tires going away and then we needed to move up. So when we saw some of those guys running fast laps a little bit higher up, I was looking forward to making that last lap. The guys made some great adjustments. We unfortunately had a tire going down on the left front, so I don’t know if that helped us or hurt us, but it was pretty nice to get that pole. That’s awesome."

WHICH LANE WORKED THE BEST IN THE FINAL SEGMENT?
"Certainly the top lane worked in the final segment. What we see with this tire, with this track, with this car is that you can run around the bottom for a lap or two when the tires have good grip in them, but you’ve got to move up the race track and I almost made a mistake in the second round by not moving up top and we got knocked back to seventh. But that run I was fully committed to it and it stuck really good.

"And that’s 200 poles for Hendrick Motorsports. That’s amazing. And it’s great to be able to do that for them."

IS THIS A STATEMENT RACE FOR YOUR TEAM?
"Yes and no. I don't think that is how we are approaching this weekend or looking at this weekend. I'm really excited about that pole with our Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet. I don't know if I've ever been on the pole here before, and to be the 200th pole for Hendrick Motorsports is really cool. I think the way we are looking at this weekend is we want to close out the season the absolute best we can. It has been a tremendous season. The No. 24 team has been incredible this year. We are disappointed that we aren't in this thing for the championship, but that's not going to stop us from trying to go out to win the pole and win the race."

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