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Busch captures Pocono pole

LONG POND - Kyle Busch has never won a race at Pocono International Raceway.

That might not sound too out of the ordinary, as many drivers throughout their careers haven't been able to conquer the "Tricky Triangle," but the driver of the Joe Gibbs Racing M&M's No. 18 Toyota Camry has pretty much won everywhere else.In fact, Busch has 38 career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wins and 87 NASCAR Xfinity Series victories, which means the fact that Kyle Busch has not won at Pocono is pretty out of the ordinary.On Sunday, Busch will be looking to put that Pocono notch in his belt and after his qualifying performance on Friday; he will certainly have a favorable chance of doing so. Busch's lap of 50.237 (179.151 mph) was good enough to take home the Coors Light Pole award for Sunday's Axalta Pocono 400.Busch's performance on Friday gave him his second pole and 12th top 10 start of the 2017 season and his 21st career pole in 440 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series starts."At practice today, we only concentrated on qualifying runs and that obviously worked out well for us," said Busch. "We got lucky with some clouds in the first two rounds and we ran good laps and then the sun came out for the final round. I didn't think we'd run that good of a lap in the final round, with the sun out, so credit has to go to my guys for making great adjustments."Overall, Toyota showed speed on the day with Martin Truex Jr. and Busch's teammate Matt Kenseth giving Toyota the top three starting spots for Sunday's race.Truex Jr. turned in a lap of 50.408 (178.543 mph) to start on the front row with Busch. He's also coming into Pocono with a lot of momentum, having finished in the top three in the last three Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races. Truex, which won a race at Pocono in 2015, will be starting in the top 10 for the 11th time this season and for the fifth time in 23 starts at Pocono."Great run today for a definitely trying day, we didn't get many laps in because of a power steering issue, I think we ran maybe four laps in practice and they weren't really good laps at all," said Truex Jr. "It definitely took me a couple of laps in qualifying to get my marks down and find some faith in the car and we had a strong three rounds. I'm looking forward to working on the car some more tomorrow in race trim and we'll see if we can get another win here at Pocono come Sunday."A driver to watch out for come Sunday is Kyle Larson.Larson has run well in his young career at Pocono. In his six starts, Larson has one top five and three top 10's with an average finish of 8.8 and he's also never finished lower than 12th. The 24-year old has been solid throughout the season, trailing points leader Truex Jr. by just nine points and his second place finish a week ago at Dover was his fifth runner-up performance of 2017.Jimmie Johnson continued his climb in the victory record books a week ago with his 11th career victory at Dover and his 83rd Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory.Johnson didn't put together the qualifying effort he hoped for on Friday as he will roll off 19th, but you can never count out the seven-time champ at Pocono. Johnson has three wins, 11 top fives, and 19 top 10s and has an average overall finish of 10.6. If he's able to win on Sunday, he will move up to fifth on the all-time wins list.Johnson's No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet wasn't the only Hendrick Motorsports car to struggle in qualifying as Chase Elliott (25th), Kasey Kahne (26th), and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (28th) all lacked speed on the day.Earnhardt Jr.'s qualifying effort can't really be over-analyzed because he blew an engine in practice, meaning his team had to change the engine. That means he has to start in the back on Sunday. Earnhardt Jr. ran just one lap in race-trim to make sure the engine and transmission worked smoothly.In his last 11 starts at Pocono, Earnhardt Jr. has accumulated nine top-10's, including two wins when he swept the summer series in 2014. It will be a hard charge to the front for Earnhardt Jr., but one thing is for sure with it being his second to last start at Pocono, there will be plenty of No. 88 flags flying high throughout the weekend in Long Pond.

Crew members push the car of Kyle Busch into the inspection area before practice for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono. AP PHOTO Copyright - Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.