William Byron made a lap around Pocono Raceway during Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying on Saturday that clocked in at 51.875 seconds/173.494 mph to claim the pole for Sunday’s Pocono 400. It’s his third-career Cup Series pole, all coming in 2019, and his second-straight. His qualifying lap was the fastest for the entire weekend, heading into the race, including two Friday practice sessions.
“It’s on me to know what I need throughout the race, and I feel like I’m starting to learn a little bit of what it takes during the last 100 laps instead of the first 80, which we’ve been pretty good at,” Byron said. “This is great. It’s an impound race, so it’s great to see our speed is there. I’m just really excited. The guys have worked really hard on this 24 car, everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, the engine shop, the chassis shop. It means a lot. I’m excited for it. Like you said, pole day has been pretty good for us, so we’ll keep racking those up, and hopefully, we’ll rack up a better result on race day too."
With his latest pole, Byron will on the front row for the sixth time this season through the first 14 races. He’ll be joined on the front row by Kyle Busch, making his best start of the season, to date.
“I think we missed our gaps from first practice to second practice a little bit, so we were on the splitter,” Busch said. “We got that situation resolved, and it felt pretty good.”
Clint Bowyer qualified his Ford in the third position behind Byron’s Chevrolet and Busch’s Ford, giving all manufacturers a presence in the top-three of the starting grid.
Byron made his pole-winning run 20th among the 37 drivers entered. Prior to taking the provisional pole just past the halfway point of the session, Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski were among the provisional pole sitters.
Larson was atop the scoring pylon after going out sixth and remained there until qualifying was temporarily halted after 15 cars because of a spin by J.J. Yeley. As soon as qualifying resumed, though, Keselowski topped Larson’s time. By the end of the qualifying session, Keselowski was fifth on the grid and Larson seventh.
As a result of his spin, Yeley didn’t post a lap time and wound up last.
Erik Jones was the other top-five qualifier in fourth.
“Fortunately for us, we’re starting really well in the top-five, there, in fourth,” Jones said. “I think we did a good job, there, and we just need to keep it. You can’t give that track position up all day now. It’s just going to be tough to get it back.”
Denny Hamlin qualified sixth, joining Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Busch and Jones to give JGR four cars in the top-three rows.
“It’s kind of what we expected,” Hamlin said. “We didn’t make a run yesterday, but we’ll be hopefully somewhere in the top-12, 13, there, and race from there. Just really want a smooth race from our standpoint. We’ve had blown tires and all kinds of crazy stuff happen. We’ve had blown tires three or four weeks in a row, so we’ve got to just – if we have a smooth race, we know we’re going to have a good race, so we just hope to have a smooth one here and get back on the train we were on.”
Their teammate and race winner from a week earlier, Martin Truex Jr., wound up 20th.
Other top-10 qualifiers included Jimmie Johnson in eighth, Daniel Suarez ninth and Austin Dillon in 10th.
