Another Daytona 500, another pole for Hendrick Motorsports. Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson recorded a 49.680-second/181.159 mph lap in the second of two rounds of qualifying at Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday to claim Hendrick’s seventh pole in the last eight Daytona 500s.
“Yeah, it’s really neat. It makes me just, I mean anytime you are really proud of your team to get a pole here cause this is the littlest it has to do with us drivers, qualifying at superspeedways,” Larson said. “Just a huge thank you to the engine shop at Hendrick Motorsports. Everybody who’s had a part in touching these vehicles, whether it be on the computer, engineering, or just hands on. It’s really neat, just awesome the speed in our HendrickCars.com Chevy. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a really good weekend.”
One of Larson’s HMS teammates and 2021 race pole sitter, Alex Bowman, qualified second for a Hendrick Motorsports sweep of the starting grid front row and his own fifth-straight Daytona 500 front-row start.
Only the front row was set after Wednesday night’s qualifying session, as the rest of the 40-car Daytona 500 starting grid will be set after two Bluegreen Vacations Duel races Thursday night. Even so, Jacques Villeneueve and Noah Gragson know they will be two of the four drivers with open, or non-chartered, teams to race in the Daytona 500, as NASCAR will revert to Wednesday’s qualifying speeds to set two of the final starting positions for Sunday’s race. Villeneueve and Gragson were the two fastest of six open entrants Wednesday.
“I was convinced we didn’t have the speed to get in on time, and I thought we would then have to fight it through the Duels,” Villeneueve said. “Somehow today the car was a lot easier to drive. It was easy to be smooth because we got in by not a lot. It was very, very close. It was all a matter of getting right up to speed coming out of turn two, going through the gears, getting away from the wall to not block the air, just getting these extra few revs and that made the difference.”
The 2022 edition of the race will be the first Daytona 500 for both Gragson and Villeneueve. Gragson attempted to qualify for last year’s race but failed to make it.
Hendrick Motorsports drivers dominated Wednesday’s qualifying session. After Daniel Hemric was first to make a qualifying attempt and was fastest through more than half of the opening round, all four Hendrick drivers went out late in the round and posted the four fastest laps, led by William Byron. In the 10-driver second round, the HMS quartet posted top-five laps, separated only by fourth-place Aric Almirola.
