Michael McDowell beat teammate Todd Gilliland to pole place with a lap of 49.136s across the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Each drivers are going through a must-win scenario and led a legion of Fords on the entrance of the sector, sweeping the primary three rows.
For McDowell, that is his fourth pole of the season and his third on a drafting monitor. He had zero poles within the earlier 16 years of his Cup profession, however is now benefiting from FRM’s Tier 1 standing inside the Ford group and a technical alliance with Staff Penske.
“I am simply so pleased with all people at Entrance Row Motorsports,” mentioned McDowell. “To have each automobiles on the entrance row is simply wonderful. It is only a testomony to how arduous everyone seems to be working. We all know we now have two pictures left right here, however this can be a huge weekend for us. To have each automobiles up entrance is de facto necessary. Hopefully, we will keep up entrance, management the race, and provides ourselves a preventing probability to get into these playoffs.”
Michael McDowell, Entrance Row Motorsports, Love’s Journey Stops Ford Mustang
Photograph by: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / Motorsport Photographs
Gilliland was 0.098s shy of incomes his first-career pole. Beforehand, he finest begin was third at Talladega. “I needed it extraordinarily unhealthy,” he instructed NBC. “We undoubtedly have a automobile that is quick sufficient to go win this race tomorrow.”
Penske’s Joey Logano will begin third, adopted by the Stewart-Haas trio of Ryan Preece, Josh Berry and Chase Briscoe. William Byron was the top-qualifying Chevrolet driver in seventh, breaking apart the Blue Oval celebration. Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, and Chase Elliott crammed out the rest of the top-ten.
Trying on the drivers within the midst of the playoff factors battle, Chris Buescher was the highest qualifier in thirteenth.