Hendrick Motorsports captured the front row for Sunday’s Daytona 500. Chase Elliott, who is just in his second year of full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition earned his second consecutive Daytona 500 pole.
“It is awesome. I am just really proud of everybody at our shop – the Hendrick Engine Shop, the Hendrick Chassis Shop, Hendrick Motorsports as a whole and the No. 24 team for sure. I appreciate all of their hard work. It is great to have NAPA on board this weekend,” Elliott said.
The No. 24 has good history during qualifying for the Daytona 500 with Jeff Gordon earning the pole in 2015 and Chase Elliott earning back-to-back poles in 2016 and 2017.
“Yeah, this is really cool. I’m just happy for our NAPA team and it’s great to have Napa on board this weekend and a big thanks to the Hendrick engine shop and Chevrolet. Everybody at Hendrick Motorsports has done a lot of work this off-season. This team definitely has a knack for these plate tracks as they showed with Jeff Gordon and then last year with here and Talladega,” Elliott said after earning his second consecutive Daytona 500 pole.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. who returns to full-time competition next Sunday will start from the front row in the second position for the fourth time in his career at the Daytona 500.
“We sure would have liked to have gotten a pole, happy my teammate Chase (Elliott) got the pole, congratulations to the No. 24 guys. They just certainly know how to get the job done at these plate tracks for sure. It will make Rick (Hendrick, team owner) happy to have all of the front row, an all Hendrick front row. We are a little disappointed,” Earnhardt admitted. “It would have been nice to get the pole, but it is good to be up front and starting up front for our qualifying race, that will be great.”
Defending and seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson did not make the final round of qualifying and was 14th on the speed charts.
Johnson spoke about his disappointing run, saying, “Decent, I mean that is kind of on par with where we were yesterday in single car runs. Great to see the speed out of the No. 24, maybe we can learn something from that. Certainly, learned some lessons in the Clash earlier and the way we were trying to generate speed. Live and learn and we will get smarter and race better on Thursday and race even better on Sunday.”
Kasey Kahne was eighth on the speed charts.
“Qualifying went really well yesterday and today. I thought the guys brought a great car down here and look forward to the duels to see how the handling is,” Kahne said.
Below is the projected Hendrick Motorsports lineup per NASCAR.com for the duels this Thursday evening on Fox Sports 1:
Duel 1: Chase Elliott will start from the pole on Thursday.
Duel 2: Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the pole with teammate Kasey Kahne starting fourth and Jimmie Johnson starting seventh.
The Duels can be seen live on Fox Sports 1 starting at 7 p.m. Eastern Thursday, Feb. 26.
