Kenseth's crew best during qualifying

Sub 13-second stop gives Kenseth third spot

CONCORD, N.C. -- Qualifying for the Nextel All-Star Challenge was proof positive why Matt Kenseth's pit crew is widely renowned as the most efficient in NASCAR's Nextel Cup Series.

	Matt Kenseth

The No. 17 crew pieced together a session-best 12.3-second pit stop, propelling Kenseth to the third-place starting position in Saturday's night's big show.

"I'm not used to starting up that far, for sure," Kenseth said. "We won the pole here one time with our pit stop and tonight we were fairly close, so that feels good.

"If we could have a pit stop every week, I'd probably be able to qualify a little closer to (Ryan) Newman."

Newman qualified second and entered the post-qualifying press conference pumping his fists in excitement for Kenseth, who is admittedly a subpar qualifier.

"I probably let the guys down a little bit, because they said we had the fastest stop of the night," said Kenseth of his qualifying run, which was timed at 124.316 seconds. "Leaving pit road I just couldn't get it to hook up. I looked like John Force leaving the pits there. I couldn't get the back tires to stick.

"This was the best engine I've ever drove, and I spun the tires forever. I thought I got around the track pretty good. But being a 25th-place qualifier, you've got to do better than that, even if they're perfect on pit road."

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Kenseth fell some three tenths of a second short of Rusty Wallace's pole-winning lap, and cited his entrance to pit road as possible reasoning.

"I may have been a little too careful getting onto pit road, might have lost a little time there," Kenseth said. "I got on there pretty good, but I always feel you can get a little bit more.

"You're never really sure how hard you can go without getting caught. I went right dead on the marker because so many guys were getting caught."

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Among those who were cited for speeding on pit lane were Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne, who produced the evening's two fastest times but will start 14th and 16th, respectively, after being assessed 20-second speeding penalties.

"It's cool to qualify good," Kenseth said. "The guys get really, really pumped up about this. They practice really, really hard for this and the pit stop competition.

"Those two things, I know my guys really practice hard and they take a lot of pride in that, because they can be in the middle of the race and I could be running eighth and we could have a 12-second pit stop and nobody might notice.

"Here, everybody is watching them and they're all on TV, so it's kind of their time to shine."

And shine they did.