Stewart-Haas Racing LifeLock.com 400 Qualifying – video

Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice “Back-to-School” Chevrolet Impala, led the two-car Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) contingent in time trials at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., by qualifying third for Saturday night’s LifeLock.com 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

Stewart turned a lap of 29.528 seconds at 182.877 mph on the 1.5-mile oval to score his fourth top-10 qualifying effort in the last six races.

“I’ll take it. It wasn’t a pretty lap, but it was fast,” said Stewart, who has two wins (2004 and 2007) and only two finishes outside the top-five in nine career starts at Chicagoland. “It gave us a good starting spot for tomorrow night and hopefully gets us another top five, maybe a win here.”

Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala for SHR, qualified 19th with a time of 29.733 seconds at 181.616 mph.

“We were just fighting loose on the lap,” said Newman, who won at Chicagoland in 2002 and has three consecutive top-10 finishes at the racetrack. “It’s not the lap we wanted.”

Jamie McMurray captured his sixth career pole, his third of the season and his first at Chicagoland by posting a lap of 29.421 seconds at 183.542 mph.

Four-time and reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson will start alongside McMurray on the outside of row one, as he timed in at 29.463 seconds at 183.281 mph. Stewart was third, while Greg Biffle (29.561 seconds at 182.673 mph) and Sam Hornish Jr., (29.572 seconds at 182.605 mph) rounded out the top-five.

Forty-seven drivers attempted to qualify for the LifeLock.com 400. Those not making the cut in the 43-car field were Michael McDowell, Dave Blaney, J.J. Yeley and Todd Bodine.

As far as manufacturers went, Chevrolet took the top-three spots thanks to the qualifying efforts of McMurray, Johnson and Stewart. Ford was next best at the hands of Biffle, while Dodge was the third-fastest make thanks to Hornish. David Reutimann, who qualified seventh, was the top Toyota at 29.575 seconds at 182.587 mph.

The LifeLock.com 400 gets underway at 7:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday, July 10 with live coverage provided by TNT beginning with its pre-race show at 6:30 p.m.

Tony’s post-qualifying press conference: