By alley - Jul 1, 2016, 6:27 PM ET

XFINITY: Ragan earns pole for ailing Tifft

David Ragan earned his first NASCAR Xfinity Series pole since 2007 Friday at Daytona International Speedway, putting in a lap of 49.904 seconds in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in place of Matt Tifft, who was set to have surgery to remove a brain tumor.

The 20-year-old Tifft was

recently diagnosed

with a low-grade glioma during a recent evaluation for a disc condition in his back that sidelined him for the June 19 race at Iowa. He was scheduled to have surgery Friday, but took to Twitter to say the procedure had been delayed.

Ragan, who was announced as this weekend's replacement on Tuesday, said he is just keeping the seat warm.

"I know Matt wishes he was here today," Ragan told NBCSN. "We're thinking about you Matt, and hopefully you're doing good. Tune in tonight. I'm going to try and take care of your race car and so far I've taken care of it. ... This is always a challenging race trying to dodge the wrecks and anticipate how the ending is going to work out. But we've got a good starting spot and we're going to have some fun tonight."

Tonight's race gets underway at 7:30 p.m. ET. The starting grid can be found

here

.