NASCAR implemented its new formula for determining race starting grids for the remainder of the 2020 season for the race weekend at Daytona International Speedway. That formula, which uses stats including owner points and race finish and fastest lap from the most recent race, put 2020’s winningest drivers, so far, on the front row for Sunday’s GoBowling.com 235 on the Daytona International Speedway road course. Kevin Harvick, who won his fifth and sixth races of the season during a NASCAR Cup Series doubleheader weekend at Michigan International Speedway the previous weekend, was awarded the pole. Five-race winner Denny Hamlin will start in the second position, on the front row next to Harvick.
Sunday’s race will be the first for the Cup Series on Daytona’s road course.
“Me leading everyone into turn one at Daytona could be interesting, because I have no freaking clue where I’m going,” Harvick said.
Hamlin will have two of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates in row two — Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch, who still is in search of his first win of the season. Busch participated in the Rolex 24 at Daytona on the road course earlier this year.
“I think anytime you’re able to go to a racetrack and gain some experience, run some laps, obviously it helps with the visual, the pickup points, how the corners transition and so on, it helps,” Busch said. “There’s definitely – I hope, anyway – there’s a little added advantage there. The big difference is the cars I drove in the GTD class, they’re very technologically advanced with the brakes and traction control, so a lot of things you can really attack with those cars, plus a lot of downforce, and they’re lighter. Our cars are going to be heavier with more power and less braking ability, so everything is going to be opposite. It’s going to be like driving a 1960s Cadillac around the track compared to the Rolex 24 car I raced. Certainly, though, if you can learn from the driving technique it took to drive that car and apply it to the Cup car, then you’ll get up to speed relatively quicker than some of the other guys, probably.”
Joey Logano will start fifth and share the third row of the starting grid with another Ford driver, Kevin Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Aric Almirola in the sixth position.
“I feel like, as a driver, I’ve become better at road courses over the years,” Almirola said. “The simulator technology Ford provides us gives me an opportunity to improve my road-course skills. This will be the first road-course outing together for me and (crew chief) Mike Bugarewicz, so I’m excited to see if we can continue this momentum at a new venue.”
With Ford and Toyota drivers claiming all the starting positions in the top-six, or first three rows, Chase Elliott will be the highest-starting Chevrolet driver in the seventh position.
Starting eighth through 10th will be Kurt Busch, Matt DiBenedetto and Austin Dillon.
“With unprecedented times here in 2020, I think the call from NASCAR to make this unprecedented move is brilliant,” Kurt Busch said. “With Watkins Glen not able to host a race in upstate New York, and to have the road course available for us down in Daytona, with no practice and no qualifying and just jumping straight into the race, why not? We’ve done everything in 2020 so far to overcome all these hurdles. I think the fun factor this weekend has got everybody’s anxiety-level up, but also the challenge that’s right in front of us, because it’s basically a wild card-style race, where you could see a driver and a team that don’t normally make the playoffs, punch their ticket.”
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