Cup Series road course king van Gisbergen reigns again with Coronado pole

Shane van Gisbergen remains the rabbit the NASCAR Cup Series field is chasing on road and street courses.

Saturday afternoon, van Gisbergen won the pole for the inaugural event at Naval Base Coronado. He blistered the 3.4-mile course with a fast lap of 2m14.788s (90.809 mph). It is van Gisbergen’s sixth career pole in the Cup Series and his second in the last three road and street course events.

“A little bit,” said van Gisbergen about being surprised he won the pole. “I thought the track would be better and I thought people would execute a bit better. But, as I said, it’s just so difficult. There are three of four corners that we’re seeing for the first time of the day and it’s on your heater. So, amazing.

“I guess the Red Bull Chevy is really good. Thank you to Trackhouse for doing a great job from yesterday and just need to get the driver better.”

Carson Hocevar qualified second with a lap of 90.704 mph. It is the second time in three races that Hocevar has qualified on the front row.

Ryan Blaney qualified third (90.634 mph), Zane Smith qualified fourth (90.405 mph), and Todd Gilliland qualified fifth (90.402 mph). Daniel Suarez qualified sixth (90.377 mph) and Ryan Preece qualified seventh (90.343 mph).

Connor Zilisch qualified eighth (90.077 mph), Michael McDowell qualified ninth (90.048 mph) and Austin Hill completed the top 10 (90.027 mph).

The rest of the top 15 in qualifying were Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace, Corey Heim, Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger.

Tyler Reddick, the championship points leader, qualified 17th. Reddick spun during his lap and bounced the splitter off the Turn 2 wall.

Kevin Magnussen qualified 21st for his NASCAR debut.

Denny Hamlin qualified 26th, William Byron qualified 27th, Brad Keselowski qualified 29th and Chase Elliott was 30th. Jimmie Johnson qualified 36th for his home race and Christopher Bell qualified 37th.

It will be a field of 39 taking the green flag on Sunday.

RESULTS

UP NEXT: The Anduril 250 at 4pmET Sunday.