Kevin Harvick wins pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Hollywood Casino 400

In Kevin Harvick’s first 13 seasons in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, he started on the pole six times.

On Friday, Harvick secured his eighth pole of the 2014 season with a final-round fastest lap of 197.621 mph at Kansas Speedway.

“I’m just really proud of everybody on our Budweiser team,” said Harvick, who also won the pole last week at Dover. “We’ve been dealt some bad luck throughout the year, but it hasn’t fazed them in continuing to work on the cars and the speed.”

Harvick claimed his third consecutive pole at Kansas Speedway, where he will start on the front row for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400.

Prior to this season, he started better than 10th only one time in 15 starts on the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway tri-oval. But those demons are thoroughly a thing of the past now.

In the second round of qualifying, Harvick smashed his own track qualifying record by turning a lap at 197.773 mph.

Harvick added nearly 13 mph to the Kansas Speedway track record in qualifying May 10 for the 5-Hour Energy 400 (194.252) and bumped it up another 3 mph Friday.

Then again, each of the top 23 drivers on Friday qualified faster than Harvick’s 5-month-old track record.

Harvick won six poles in his first 473 races, but he now owns eight in the last 23, including four in the last seven races. He has broken track qualifying records six times this season.

Brian Vickers and Aric Almirola, who was eliminated from the Chase after the Challenger round, qualified second and third.

Chase drivers Joey Logano, Jeff Gordon, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. round out the first four rows for Sunday’s race.

“This place can be really tough,” said Columbia native Carl Edwards, who qualified 12th. “Track position will be key and the speeds are so high. We are going through the corners extremely fast and I think, if you don’t start up front, if you don’t have a really good spot, you could be in trouble. There is potential for big wrecks here. The restarts are crazy, and it is so knife-edge. If somebody messes up, they could take out three or four cars.”

Among other Chase drivers, Kasey Kahne qualified 10th and Ryan Newman will start 17th. But not every driver in the Contender round had a good day.

Six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson qualified 32nd, the worst among the 12 drivers still alive for a championship.

Johnson spent time on pit road with an overheating car and spun out after returning to the track in the first qualifying round.

Meanwhile, Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth settled for 25th and 27th, respectively.

This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 8:43 PM with the headline "Kevin Harvick wins pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Hollywood Casino 400."