BRISTOL, Tenn. — A little ray of sunshine was all Alex Bowman needed to secure the pole position for Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Well, not quite all. Bowman also had to turn a blistering lap in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet during Saturday’s time trials at the 0.533-mile short track, and he did just that.
Bowman covered the distance in 14.912 seconds (128.675 mph) — the fastest lap ever run at Bristol in the NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen car. That was good enough to hold off fellow Chevrolet driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (128.563 mph) by 0.013 seconds to secure the top starting spot for the ninth Cup Series race of the season.
It wasn’t just the Busch Light Pole Award that had Bowman salivating. Extensive tire wear in the practice session that preceded qualifying compared to last year’s spring event in Thunder Valley, where tire fall-off was a crucial aspect of the competition.
“I think we’re all much more prepared than we were last spring,” said Bowman, who ran his lap under favorable cloud cover — with the sun coming out shortly after his qualifying attempt and warming the track slightly on an otherwise chilly day.
“I’m excited for a tire management race. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ll see what we’ve got,” he added.
“We started practice with rubber already on the track from the Xfinity cars, peeled it right up and sawed the tires right off. Yeah, confusing why we’re doing it again when we didn’t do it in the fall.
“It’s going to be warmer tomorrow. Maybe that changes it. It’s really difficult to say. I think it’s going to be like that (the spring race), but we’ll find out together, I think.”
Kyle Larson (128.511 mph) qualified third, after winning the pole position for Saturday’s Xfinity Series race earlier in the day. Denny Hamlin, winner of the last two Cup events, was fourth in the fastest Toyota at 128.460 mph, and Ryan Blaney topped all other Ford drivers with a fifth-place qualifying lap at 128.305 mph.
In seven of the last eight Cup races at Bristol, the winner has come from the top five spots on the starting grid — two from the pole and two from the second starting position.
Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell claimed the sixth and seventh starting spots, with AJ Allmendinger, Carson Hocevar and Justin Haley claiming eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
Kyle Busch was 15th fastest in qualifying, but he spun off Turn 4 on his second lap and flat-spotted his tires. Joey Logano, who qualified immediately after Busch, broke loose off Turn 2 and smacked the outside wall with the right rear of his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. Logano will start 38th on Sunday.
Xfinity Series regular Jesse Love qualified 19th for his Cup Series debut on Sunday in the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
Hyak Motorsports’ Ricky Stenhouse Jr. topped the leaderboard in practice at 128.082 mph ahead of Team Penske drivers Blaney (127.571 mph) and Austin Cindric (127.140 mph).
Larson (126.737 mph) and Chase Elliott (126.520 mph) rounded out the top five for Hendrick Motorsports.
Brad Keselowski (126.495 mph), Hamlin (126.461 mph), Busch (126.337 mph), John Hunter Nemechek (126.187 mph) and Bowman (126.121 mph) completed the top 10.
–Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service. Special to Field Level Media.
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