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Tony Stewart won the pole for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway with a qualifying lap at 171.393 mph on Friday.

The pole for the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500, was Stewart’s second of the season 12th of his career. Stewart, a two-time series champion, is looking for his first victory of 2010.

“Well, we’ve been having a lot of fun,” Stewart said. “We got here to Pocono late last night. We were in Fargo, North Dakota last night racing a winged Sprint Car and I was racing with some of the best wing guys in the country and crashed myself out of a second place run last night, so I was mad when I got here. I told (crew chief) Darian Grubb and these guys that it might be a long practice day and I wasn’t too bad on them was I was going to take it out on somebody and I took it out on the stopwatch there during qualifying.”

Second fastest was Juan Pablo Montoya, who is fresh off a second straight disappointing finish at the Brickyard 400. Montoya posted a lap at 171.096 mph.

Denny Hamlin, who won the race at Pocono in early June this year, was third.

“Still not there,” Hamlin said. “The time might look OK, but we still have some work to do. The most encouraging thing is that as bad as this thing is handling right now, we got some speed out of it. That’s opposite of where we usually are. I have no doubt that tomorrow we’re going to fine tune this thing.”

Jeff Gordon was fourth fastest and Ryan Newman was fifth.

Jimmie Johnson, going for a fifth straight championship, was sixth.

Rounding out the top 10 were A.J. Allmendinger, Jeff Burton, Brickyard winner Jamie McMurray and Mark Martin.

All of the top 10 except for Hamlin (Toyota) and Allmendinger (Ford) were driving Chevrolets.

Point leader Kevin Harvick was 14th fastest.

(This story will be updated shortly)

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