Harvick took his Stewart-Haas Chevrolet around the 1.5 mile Kansas Speedway in 27.325 seconds at an average speed of 197.621mph to secure the top spot, beating Brian Vickers and Aric Almirola.

"In the end, it's obviously just about having fast cars," said Harvick. "With a little bit of good luck we know that we can beat anybody on any given weekend, and that's a good feeling to have as a driver."

Vickers, who finished up just under 0.2s short, was almost as pleased with his spot on the outside of the front row.

"That was an awesome car," he said. "The car is definitely on the edge at those speeds, and it was a lot of fun."

Harvick aside, the big story of the day was the spin in the opening qualifying phase that consigned Jimmie Johnson to the rear of the field.

Johnson had struggled for speed on his first run and went out again in search of an improvement, but lost the rear and looped back down to the bottom of the track, flat-spotting his tyres along the way. He will start from row 16. Fellow Chase contenders Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin were also bumped early, but the majority of those who remained managed to earn a spot somewhere in the top 10.

Brad Keselowski, who qualified sixth, said that the weekend could be critical to his hopes of a second Cup title.

"We certainly improved a lot since practice, but we've got to keep working at it," he said. "This is probably our weakest track of the Chase, so if we can have a good result here then we should be in good shape."