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McDowell grabs yet another superspeedway pole at Atlanta
Michael McDowell is once again on the pole for a NASCAR Cup Series superspeedway race.
McDowell topped the chart Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway with a lap of 179.267mph (30.926s). It's McDowell’s fifth pole of the season and the fifth of his career. He has started no worse than second for a superspeedway race.
“It’s just great; I’m so proud of everybody at Front Row,” McDowell said. “We knew we’d have a shot based on Daytona and we sat on the pole here earlier [in the year], but to get this Blaster Ford Mustang its fifth pole of the year. We still have Talladega ahead, too, so we’re trying to win the most poles. Watkins Glen is coming up. We’ll keep fighting hard but really proud of the effort.”
Defending series champion Ryan Blaney (P) qualified second at 178.844mph; Todd Gilliland, third at 178.770mph; Josh Berry, fourth at 178.453mph and Austin Cindric (P), fifth at 178.430mph.
Kyle Larson (P) qualified sixth at 178.367mph; Joey Logano (P), seventh at 178.361mph; Austin Dillon, eighth at 178.155mph; William Byron (P), ninth at 178.098mph and Chase Briscoe (P), 10th at 178.086mph.
The rest of the playoff drivers qualified 11th (Alex Bowman), 12th (Harrison Burton), 16th (Chase Elliott), 19th (Brad Keselowski), 20th (Ty Gibbs), 22nd (Martin Truex Jr.), 23rd (Tyler Reddick), 26th (Christopher Bell), 30th (Daniel Suarez), and 38th (Denny Hamlin).
Hamlin qualified 38th of 38 drivers in the field. He was over 10mph slower than McDowell’s pole speed, and his No. 11 team and Toyota quickly went to work when Hamlin pulled into the garage.
“They see a few red flags, certainly, so they’ll dig into it tonight and figure it out and get it fixed for tomorrow,” Hamlin said.
NEXT: Quaker State 400 at 3 p.m. ET Sunday.
(P) denotes playoff driver
Kelly Crandall
Kelly has been on the NASCAR beat full-time since 2013, and joined RACER as chief NASCAR writer in 2017. Her work has also appeared in NASCAR.com, the NASCAR Illustrated magazine, and NBC Sports. A corporate communications graduate from Central Penn College, Crandall is a two-time George Cunningham Writer of the Year recipient from the National Motorsports Press Association.
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