If nothing else, Kyle Busch is proving that his 2008 success at Joe Gibbs Racing is a total team effort.The 23-year-old driver drove to the pole for Saturday night's Sprint Cup All-Star Race XXIV at Lowe's Motor Speedway, just ahead of former teammate Jeff Gordon and brother Kurt Busch.
The qualifying format for the All-Star event is much, much different than a time trial for any other race on the Sprint Cup Series schedule. Instead of a driver making laps on track alone, in the All-Star format the driver has to complete three laps and the pit crew has to perform a four-tire pit stop.
Kyle Busch's crew dropped a four-tire stop of 13.4 seconds, and that combined with his laps gave Busch an elapsed time of 121.956 seconds. Gordon had the same speed of pit stop, but was about a half-second off of Busch's time.
A few penalties were assessed including Dale Jarrett, Kevin Harvick, and Casey Mears earning five-second penalties and speeding on to pit road were Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards, earning each of them a 20-second penalty.
Jimmie Johnson's time was disallowed after missing a lug nut on the pit stop, pulling ahead, and then having service done outside of the pit box area by the Lowe's crew.
Kurt Busch's Miller Lite crew busted out a 12.9-second pit stop which was the fastest of the night. Harvick's team had the same time, but the penalty was a killer.




