Championship contender Kyle Larson easily won the pole position for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship race (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with a top speed of 137.837 mph in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet – going out next to last among the 39 cars entered.
Larson, the Regular Season Champion and a nine-time race winner, easily out-ran the field. His time was .173-seconds faster than his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, defending series champ Chase Elliott who will start alongside him on the front row.
The other two Championship contending drivers, Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and his JGR teammate, Martin Truex Jr. will start sixth and 12th, respectively.
“A great start to the weekend,” Larson said, downplaying the pole position a bit. “I don’t know if it’s a championship-winning moment, but either way, it’s great to get off to a good start.”
Elliott, who is the defending race winner, said he remained encouraged about his chances and the front row start, a good sign.
“I feel like we were okay, I definitely feel like we need to be better though for tomorrow,” Elliott said. “We kind of chased some things through practice, kind of wound up back in a familiar place I feel like for the race, kind of where we’ve been in the past.
“We’re going to live with that. We’ll see where it takes us.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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