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Byron throws it back at Darlington with second pole of 2025
William Byron will lead the field to the green flag Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team captured the pole with a lap of 170.904mph (28.774s) in single-car qualifying. It is his second pole of the season, and at Darlington, and the 15th of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
“It was a good week of prep by our guys; just really proud of their effort,” Byron told Prime. “I’ve got a great looking throwback scheme back to Jeff Gordon’s 2015 car, so thanks to Axalta and Chevrolet.
“The lap, I felt like [Turns] 1 and 2 was really good. I gave up a little bit in [Turn] 4, and you could kind of see that on the tracker, so I was just good enough to get through there, and through the middle of [Turns[ 3 and 4 was also decent. I’m proud of that. To get a pole here is great … We usually run really well here, so we’ve just got to put it together tomorrow.”
Byron’s lap is the fastest at Darlington Raceway in the Next Gen era.
Ryan Preece will join Byron on the front row. Preece qualified second with a lap of 170.407mph.
Denny Hamlin qualified third (170.354mph), Chase Briscoe fourth (170.283mph), Bubba Wallace fifth (170.189mph), Austin Cindric sixth (169.877mph) and Tyler Reddick seventh (169.836mph).
Kyle Busch qualified eighth (169.824mph), Ryan Blaney ninth (169.818mph) and Michael McDowell 10th (169.736mph).
Carson Hocevar qualified 13th after being fastest in practice. His lap was 169.608mph.
Christopher Bell qualified 17th, Joey Logano 18th, Kyle Larson 19th and Brad Keselowski, the defending race winner, 20th. Keselowski’s fastest lap was 168.573mph.
NEXT: The Goodyear 400 at 3 p.m. ET Sunday.
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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