Kevin Harvick will begin his bid for a third-straight AAA Texas 500 win and certain advancement to the championship round of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs from the pole on Sunday after posting a 28.465-second/189.707 mph lap during Cup Series qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday evening. It’s his sixth pole of the season and his second-career pole at TMS.
“I think the key to the lap was, obviously, knowing that you had to be wide open and kind of did a halfway qualifying run yesterday and worked most of the day on race runs and making sure we ran enough laps to know where our car was,” Harvick said. "I think the first pit stall is, obviously, a good stall to have here for pit road time and the things that go with that, and I think it is, obviously, going to be a track position game like it was last time, and hopefully, that helps us stay on the right side of that.”
Erik Jones, one of the drivers already eliminated from the playoffs, qualified second to start next to Harvick on the front row.
“I was definitely surprised. I didn’t think that we’d be that fast,” Jones said. “Also, didn’t think we would be the best of our JGR [Joe Gibbs Racing] cars. It was really good. I’m really proud of the effort, obviously. Going into qualifying day, sometimes anymore this package doesn’t rely on the driver; it relies on having a good race car. We definitely have that. The Sport Clips Camry has been fast. Yesterday, it felt really good in practice. I’m definitely happy with the qualifying effort and starting up front.”
One of Jones’ Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Denny Hamlin, the Texas Motor Speedway race winner earlier this season, was the only playoff driver other than Harvick to qualify inside the top-10. He qualified right behind teammate Jones in third.
“A good qualifying effort for us,” Hamlin said. “Definitely is going to be better than we’ve been on the mile-and-a-halves. The team brought a fast car, and we were really happy with it yesterday. I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
Harvick held the provisional pole position throughout over half of Saturday’s qualifying session, going out 15th among the 40 drivers who made qualifying attempts and taking the provisional pole from Kurt Busch, who wound up fourth. By the end of the session, Harvick was joined inside the top-10 by two of his three Stewart-Haas Racing teammates. Fellow-SHR drivers Aric Almirola and Daniel Suarez qualified sixth and seventh.
The remaining Stewart-Haas driver, Clint Bowyer, wound up outside the top-20 in 24th after leading opening practice on Friday and having the fastest 10-lap average in both of the day’s practice sessions.
Other drivers qualifying in the top-10 included Alex Bowman in fifth, Brad Keselowski in eighth, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ninth and Matt DiBenedetto in 10th. Six playoff drivers qualified outside the top-10, five of them in successive positions. Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney qualifying 11th through 15th. Martin Truex Jr., the only driver heading into the Texas race with his championship four slot secure with a win the previous weekend at Martinsville Speedway, qualified 17th, worst among the remaining eight playoff drivers.
“It’s just qualifying,” Truex said. “I don’t think we expected anything great, and it looks like it isn’t going to be that great, so we are ready to go race tomorrow.”
