Pole position per David Ragan in Texas

David Ragan claimed his maiden NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pole at Texas by leading a Roush Fenway front row sweep ahead of Carl Edwards. Ragan bumped Edwards from pole after running last in the order to complete his qualifying lap, having set the fastest practice time on Thursday afternoon. On his flying lap he was able to run nearly two tenths of a second faster than his team-mate's benchmark, setting a time of 28.448 seconds, at an average speed of 189.820 mph. "I don't know how we pulled that off but it was really fast," said Ragan who is still looking for his first victory in what will be his 153rd Cup race driving a Roush Ford Fusion. "I have to give credit to our team and [crew chief] Drew Blickensderfer who made a gutsy call. "We made our last qualifying run in practice and we decided to change the car up a little bit. It stuck and did what it needed to do. I really like this place, it is a fun place to come and it is cool to get a pole here. Hopefully we can turn that into a good run tomorrow." Edwards, a three-time winner at Texas, starts Saturday night's race as a clear favourite along with his team-mates, all having shown great consistency in race trim during practice. Behind him the Richard Childress Chevrolet of Clint Bowyer was third, ahead of a third Roush Ford of Matt Kenseth while Regan Smith continued to impress with his fifth top-five start in seven races this season. "We are fast in practice and have three of the top four in qualifying that are Fords," said Edwards. "We are as good now on the 1.5 miles, almost as good as we were in 2005 when we were lights out and won 15 total races or something like that. We are close to that form again and that is good." Reigning champion Jimmie Johnson (Hendrick) was sixth, ahead of Richard Petty's Marcos Ambrose and the fastest Toyota of Joe Gibbs Racing's Joey Logano. Greg Biffle's ninth place locked all Roush cars in the top 10, while last year's Texas winner Denny Hamlin was only 23rd. Michael McDowell was the fastest of the non-guaranteed drivers in 20th. Travis Kvapil failed to make the field.