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Carl Edwards admits that he has never been that good at New Hampshire Motor Speedway but on Friday afternoon, he won the pole for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver posted a lap of 135.164 mph, securing the first starting spot for Sunday’s 5-Hour Energy 301 (1:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM).

His first pole of the season was his first at the 1.058-mile track and 14th of his  Cup career. Edwards’ most recent pole came in November 2013 at Texas Motor Speedway.

“I’ve struggled at this race track, so this is big for me personally,” Edwards said.

Edwards improved dramatically on his previous average starting position of 14.9 at New Hampshire,

“It’s just cool, man,” he said. “My expectation is to do the best we can (on Sunday). My hope is that we win this thing. … We’ve been working very hard to bring this team together to be the best that we can be. It just feels right. This is cool. It’s a lot of fun.”

Second fastest in qualifying was Joey Logano of Team Penske. Logano posted a lap at posting a lap of 135.021 mph.

“Second,” Logano said. “It seems like the story of our week here coming off Kentucky with a strong second-place run and then qualifying second here as well.  Not that I’m complaining about it, but it’s not much fun finishing second, being so close to getting trophies and pole flags and all the fun stuff.  There’s not really much fun that happens when you finish second, but we’re close.  We’ve got speed in our race car once again.  We all know how special Loudon is to me to try to make something happen here, so it’s nice to know we’ve got a fast race car.  And I think it’s pretty good in race trim as well.  We weren’t very good in qualifying trim in practice.  We changed a lot of things and kind of lit it up a little bit, so it’s something good to know for some things to work on in practice tomorrow and try to make it happen.”

David Ragan will start third, Kyle Busch fourth and Denny Hamlin fifth.

 

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