FORT WORTH, Texas — Kurt Busch got a little more aggressive in the first round of qualifying, and it paid off with a pole at Texas Motor Speedway.

Busch and his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer will start in the top three spots in Texas after a weather-shortened qualifying session Friday.

“The thought that weather was in the area, it hadn’t crossed our minds, but yet you’ve got to play all three rounds as smart as you can,” Busch said. “I think round two, we would have picked up even more speed. Round three, that’s where we would have made a big gamble to see if we could still maintain that pace. But I’m glad we had the pace right off the truck.”

With his top lap of 197.368 mph, Busch earned his first pole this season and the 32nd in his career.

There was initially a delay because of lightning in the area soon after the first round had been completed to determine the top 24 drivers. The second and third rounds of qualifying were eventually canceled because of more lightning and threatening weather.

Harvick won at Texas in November and his three-race winning streak earlier this season included the only two races at 11/2-mile tracks. He had a lap of 197.116 mph and will start ahead of Bowyer, who before the Easter weekend break won at Martinsville two weeks ago to end a 190-race winless streak that dated to 2012.

“We had a good lap and just got beat by a little bit,” Harvick said. “We didn’t really realize that was going to be the last one, but we felt there was a chance. Kept it in the family, and that’s a good thing for Stewart-Haas Racing, and hopefully we can continue the trend of running well.”

FORMULA ONE: Lewis Hamilton’s chances of winning the Bahrain Grand Prix took a hit after he was penalized for an unscheduled gearbox change.

The Mercedes driver is expected to drop five places for the start of Sunday’s race because of the problem, which was reportedly related to a hydraulic leak sustained during the season-opening Australian GP two weeks ago.

Drivers must use gearboxes for six consecutive races before being allowed a new one.

The news came at the end of a frustrating day for Hamilton and Mercedes, with both of its drivers more than half a second slower than the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel in practice.

Vettel, the winner in Australia, will be hopeful of benefiting from Hamilton’s mishap and extending his championship lead.

Hamilton’s teammate, Valtteri Bottas, also needs a new gearbox, but he will not be penalized. He was hit with a five-place penalty for changing his gearbox in Melbourne after crashing in qualifying, so he is allowed a free change for this race. The first of his six consecutive races with the new gearbox will start in Bahrain.

INDYCAR: Sebastien Bourdais took the pole at ISM Raceway at Avondle, Arizona, bumping fellow Frenchman Simon Pagenaud on the final run of qualifying.

Bourdais had a two-lap average of 188.539 mph on the 1.022-mile oval in Dale Coyne Racing’s No. 18 car.

He’s coming off a victory March 11 in the season-opening street race in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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