NASCAR: Gordon claims Talladega Cup pole

Jeff Gordon stormed to the third pole position of his NASCAR Sprint Cup farewell season as the revised superspeedway qualifying format made its debut at Talladega.

The destructive session at Daytona – where Gordon had also been on pole – led to NASCAR dropping its group knockout qualifying system on superspeedways and returning to single-car qualifying. But unlike the pre-2014 version of that system, cars now took to the track as the previous driver was finishing his flying lap, and a knockout element was retained, with the fastest 12 in round one going into a pole shootout.

Round two was being decided by thousandths of a second until last man to run Gordon put in a 49.160s, 194.793mph lap to depose Hendrick teammate Kasey Kahne by a relatively huge 0.281s margin.

Qualifying had looked like being a Hendrick Chevrolet rout for a while, but Wood Brothers newcomer Ryan Blaney disrupted that formation by putting his Ford third on the grid.

Hendrick pair Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson took fourth and fifth ahead of Hendrick customer Tony Stewart's Stewart-Haas Chevy.

Stewart was the only one of the SHR drivers to show strongly, with last week's Richmond winner Kurt Busch down in 19th, and champion Kevin Harvick only 24th, one place ahead of teammate Danica Patrick.

Neither Penske driver made the pole shootout, with Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano back in 15th and 21st, while after its drivers led both Friday practice sessions, the best Roush Fenway could achieve was 20th for Greg Biffle.

Originally on Autosport.com