A 28.588-second/188.890 mph lap in the third of three rounds of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying Friday garnered Jimmie Johnson the pole for Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 400. Johnson’s latest pole was the 36th of Johnson’s Cup Series career but his first since a New Hampshire Motor Speedway race in July 2016.
“I feel like, over my career, good Fridays mean good Sundays,” Johnson said. “I’m thankful to have just raw speed in the car, and I think it’s that, and we’ll have to see how it works in traffic. I think at Las Vegas, we had a car capable of really performing well on Friday, and we got in race conditions and dirty air and didn’t have exactly what we needed.”
Johnson was tops all day Friday, beginning with practice. After posting the fastest lap in the day’s lone practice session, he also was fastest through all three rounds of qualifying. His third-round qualifying lap of record was his fastest, overall, of the three-round qualifying session.
Hendrick Motorsports claimed the top-three spots on the staring grid, with William Byron qualifying second to join Johnson on the front row and Chase Elliott qualifying third.
Their HMS teammate, Alex Bowman, crashed in the opening round and, as a result, started the race in the back in a backup car.
“To have all three cars up there in the top-three positions, and I think Alex would have been right there in the mix if he didn’t have his troubles in round one, is saying a lot. The work that went into these cars and the work that’s gone into, honestly, the last 36 months, and we’re not out of the woods, yet. But this is a very good weekend for us to really build on our 1.5-mile program, and I think we’re off to a great start.”
Friday evening’s qualifying session was the first under new rules implemented by NASCAR that calls for all cars to make a timed qualifying lap in each round to which it advances or have all previous round times scrapped and start the race in the back. The only car failing to do so was the No. 88 of Bowman in the second round. But his team was busy unloading its backup car to start in the back, anyway.
NASCAR did issue a pit road speeding penalty to Timmy Hill during the first round of qualifying, but his lap of record was the slowest of the 39 drivers entered, also putting him in the back, anyway.
Instead, a no-call by NASCAR officials was the big story of the qualifying session after Ryan Newman seemed to block Clint Bowyer’s route from pit road onto the race track in the opening round.
A pit-road block, under NASCAR’s new qualifying rules, calls for the blocker to start the corresponding race in the back. Newman, though, was not penalized.
“This is stupid,” Bowyer said. “Did that look like clogging the middle to you? I damn-near had to back up to go. That's not clogging the middle, apparently. We talked about clogging our conversation before qualifying. It says really clearly in lawyers’ terms how you can't clog the middle, and I be damned, the first time it clogs the middle, they don't call it. Discretionary."
Newman advanced to the second round in which he claimed the 18th spot on the starting grid, while Bowyer was unable to advance beyond round one, winding up with the 25th starting spot.
Daniel Suarez was the highest-qualifying Ford driver and non-Hendrick Motorsports competitor, qualifying fourth. He was fourth in both the second and third rounds of the session, despite making runs by himself early in each of the rounds before the big drafts hit the track.
Austin Dillon qualified fourth, and Denny Hamlin was the highest-qualifying Toyota in fifth.
