“I’m looking forward to this new opportunity with JR Motorsports and to continue representing Great Clips, both on and off the track,” Sweet said. “They’ve been extremely supportive of me over the last couple of years, so taking this step with them is very special to me. As a young driver in this sport, having the chance to drive under the JR Motorsports banner is an amazing opportunity that I plan to make the most of.”

Great Clips’ deal with JRM includes primary sponsorship of 28 races, 27 of those being on a No. 5 Chevrolet shared by Kahne in Sweet. As for that 28th race — Great Clips will sponsor a No. 88, driven by Earnhardt. JR Motorsports already has plans in place to field a No. 7 entry full-time for driver Regan Smith. The organization hopes to find funding for the No. 5 for the additional five races on the 2013 series schedule.

“To sign a 28-race sponsor, while adding Kasey Kahne and Brad Sweet to our lineup is quite extraordinary,” Motorsports General Manager Kelley Earnhardt Miller said. “Our goal is still to run two full-time teams, and this helps us greatly to achieve that.”

Great Clips has a long history with Kahne. The hair cutter was sponsor of the No. 38 car, then a part of Akins Motorsports, when Kahne joined that team in 2003. Ownership of the No. 38 has changed hands a couple of times in the years since, from Braun Racing to Turner Motorsports, but Great Clips remained on the hood through the end of the 2012 Nationwide Series season, many of those years with Kahne as a part-time driver of the car.

“Great Clips has been a long-time sponsor of mine for 10 years,” Kahne said. “They support everything that I do, from the Kasey Kahne Foundation to my sprint car team, and they continue to grow their program in NASCAR. We all look forward to joining JR Motorsports and continuing to build on the success that they have had.”

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“I’m always proud to come back to Montreal and to be able to race on this fantastic road course named after one of my all-time racing heroes, Gilles Villeneuve,” Tagliani said. “I really wanted to race here again, so when the opportunity presented itself with Turner Motorsports and we were no longer scheduled to be overseas, I was pretty excited. In Formula Atlantic, I won here from the pole and also had a pole in Indy Car. Montreal has been good to me to date and I’m hoping to better my race history here. Having a competitive car to challenge for the win is all I can wish for.”

Tagliani will be joined on the front row by Penske Racing driver Sam Hornish Jr., who posted a 100.905-second lap to grab the second starting spot.

“I feel good about our progression, how we’ve been,” Hornish said. “The good thing is that we’ve had good reliability out of our Dodge engines and out of our race cars. I’ve felt really good about the road course testing that we’ve done.”

Both Penske Racing drivers qualified in the top-three, as Jacques Villeneuve, driving the No. 22 Penske Dodge normally driven by Sprint Cup regular Brad Keselowski, qualified third at the track named for his late father.

Danica Patrick was the highest qualifier among the three JR Motorsports drivers, taking the fourth spot on the starting grid. Her teammates Cole Whitt and Ron Fellows also qualified in the top-10 in seventh and eighth.

Rounding out the top-five on Friday was Owen Kelly, who was on hand as a fill-in for Kyle Busch in the No. 54 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota. Busch was at Michigan International Speedway on Friday, qualifying his Sprint Cup Series car. When he arrives in Montreal to race his Nationwide entry, he’ll have to start from the back because of the driver change.

Michael McDowell qualified sixth in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Rounding out the top-10 in qualifying were Billy Johnson, driving the No. 60 for Roush Fenway Racing, in ninth and series regular Brian Scott in 10th.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images for NASCAR

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