McDowell takes Talladega Cup pole

Michael McDowell will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the green flag Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

McDowell earned the pole with an improvement from the first to the second round of single-car qualifying, posting a lap of 182.466 mph (52.481s). It is his second pole of the season and the eighth of his Cup Series career. Sunday, however, will be the third straight race he’s led the field at Talladega, having swept the season poles at the facility in 2024.

“Talladega, for qualifying, there is not a whole lot that the driver does but tries not to make any mistakes,” McDowell said. “Daytona got rained out for qualifying, and we were looking forward to seeing where our car was at, and if we’d made any gains from the first two superspeedway races. So, we didn’t really know where we were at today, just because we didn’t have that baseline at Daytona, but I’m really proud of the effort of everybody at Spire Motorsports.

“We’ve worked really hard to find some speed, and everyone at Hendrick engine shop has as well, in trying to catch up. Having a fast car is important, and being able to lead lanes and control lanes, you have to have speed to do that. So, the pole is awesome, but more importantly, it’s knowing you have a fast car going into the race tomorrow.”

Chase Briscoe (P) qualified second as the fastest playoff driver. Briscoe was fastest in the first round of qualifying but ended up behind McDowell at 182.400 mph.

Kyle Busch qualified third at 182.199 mph and Austin Cindric qualified fourth at 182.181 mph. Ryan Preece completed the top five at 182.116 mph.

Josh Berry qualified sixth at 182.005 mph, Christopher Bell (P) qualified seventh at 181.846 mph and Ryan Blaney (P) qualified eighth at 181.780 mph. Riley Herbst qualified ninth at 181.735 mph, and Bubba Wallace rounded out the top 10 at 181.728 mph.

The remaining playoff drivers on the starting grid are William Byron in 13th, Joey Logano in 16th, Denny Hamlin in 17th, and Kyle Larson in 19th. Chase Elliott, in 25th, was the worst qualifying playoff driver.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the defending race winner, qualified 37th.

A full field of 40 drivers will take the green flag Sunday. Those who have entered this weekend’s race are Austin Hill in a third Richard Childress Racing car, Anthony Alfredo in the Beard Motorsports car, BJ McLeod for his Live Fast Motorsports team, and Casey Mears for Garage 66.

NEXT: The YellaWood 500, the second race in the Round of 8, at 2pm ET.

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