Kevin Harvick will begin his quest for a fourth-consecutive Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 win from the pole at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday.
“I’d really like to thank [Texas Motor Speedway President] Eddie Gossage for redesigning the race track, because for whatever reason, since Eddie has redesigned the track and things have kind of fallen into being favorable for us and the things that we do with our race car and myself as a driver, it just kind of fits everything, so it’s just finally the last few years we’ve been able to capitalize on what we had on the old race track, as well and that was fast cars,” Harvick said. “I think as you look at really everything that’s happened at Texas, it’s just been A-plus, and when you have that confidence in a race track and the guys have confidence in the setup and the car and the things that they change from year to year, it’s hard to beat confidence. There’s always things that can happen, but I truly believe that we’ll go there and have a really fast car and be comfortable the week leading up to it that you made the right decisions, because we’ve made a lot of really good decisions there in the past. It’s just been a great place for us.”
The front row of Sunday’s starting grid somewhat mirrors the finishing order of the previous weekend’s playoff race at Kansas Speedway. Harvick, after finishing second to winner Joey Logano at Kansas, will share the front row with Logano for the start of Sunday’s race.
Logano’s Team Penske teammate, Brad Keselowski, will line up third for the Texas green flag, giving Ford the top-three starting positions Sunday. He’ll share the second row with Chevrolet driver Chase Elliott.
“Texas is a challenge, for sure,” Elliott said. “It’s nice to have a good starting spot, which is certainly helpful, and hopefully, we can try to keep our track position. That’s a very tough place to pass and make a lot of ground since they re-configured it. Yeah, I think that will be nice. Hopefully, we can keep the track position and move forward.”
Alex Bowman rounds out the top-five on the starting grid. The eight remaining playoff drivers will start in the top-eight positions Sunday, with Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex jr. and Denny Hamlin in the sixth and seventh positions and Kurt Busch in the last starting spot among the remaining championship contenders.
“We’re going to gas-it-up-hard at Texas,” Busch said. “We ran really well there the last few races together as a unit at Chip Ganassi Racing. And what’s great is we were in position at the spring race; actually it was a race in the Summer months of July, when Austin Dillon won. We were on the same pit sequence as he was; we took two tires just as he did, and he beat us off pit road. So we were that close at having a shot at winning earlier this year. And so that gives us good motivation and good vibes and good feel to know that we’re close, and now we have to execute here in November to do the right things to win with cooler track temps.”
Reigning Series champion Kyle Busch will start best among the rest, ninth, two weeks after his playoff elimination.
“We were okay there last year but would like to have a good run there on Sunday with our Zombie Skittles Toyota,” Busch said. “The scheme looks awesome this weekend, and it’s cool to have Skittles get in on the Halloween schemes, since we’ve done that with M&Ms for so many years.”
Kyle Busch will share the fifth row on the Texas grid with Ryan Blaney, another driver who made the 2020 Cup Series playoffs but already has been eliminated from contention.
