Aric Almirola aced qualifying at Bristol Motor Speedway to earn the NASCAR Cup Series Busch Light Pole Award.
His lap of 4.946-seconds at 128.382 mph in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 10 Ford earned him his first pole of the season and the fourth of his career.
As he leads the field to green Saturday for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, he will be joined by teammate Chase Briscoe on the front row.
After qualifying, Almirola, a non-playoff driver, said, “It absolutely feels good. Man, what a ride to rip around here in less than 15 seconds. It’s pretty crazy how fast these cars are at this racetrack, but I’m just proud of my team, proud of everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing. They brought me a really fast BlueOval City Ford Mustang. We were good in race trim and obviously had a lot of speed in qualifying trim, so now we’ve got to go do it for 500 laps tomorrow night.”
Qualifying for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway was intense as four drivers will be eliminated from playoff contention after the event.
Chase Briscoe was the fastest qualifying playoff driver and will start second after falling short of claiming the pole by only 0.022 seconds. It will be his 10th top-10 start this year. Hendrick Motorsports (HMS) driver, Alex Bowman, will start third, followed by Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin in fourth and HMS driver, Kyle Larson, in fifth.
Ryan Blaney, Kevin Harvick, Christopher Bell, Austin Cindric and Brad Keselowski, rounded out the top-10 qualifiers. Keselowski was the only other non-playoff driver among the top-10 starters.
The playoff drivers qualified as follows:
Chase Briscoe – 2nd
Alex Bowman – 3rd
Denny Hamlin – 4th
Kyle Larson – 5th
Ryan Blaney – 6th
Kevin Harvick – 7th
Christopher Bell – 8th
Austin Cindric – 9th
Ross Chastain – 12th
Joey Logano – 15th
William Byron – 16th
Tyler Reddick – 17th
Kyle Busch – 21st
Chase Elliott – 23rd
Austin Dillon – 28th
Daniel Suarez – 29th
Tune into the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at 7:30 ET Saturday evening on USA Network, the NBC Sports App, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Starting Lineup:
Bristol-12229_STARTROW
