Bubba Wallace earned his first pole of the season Saturday afternoon at Texas Motor Speedway with a qualifying lap of 188.337 mph. It was his first pole of the season and the second career pole for the driver of the 23XI Racing No. 23 Toyota.
Wallace called it a “good start” but is focused on the bigger prize as the team heads into the first race in the Playoffs Round of 16.
“We have the best track position right now, but we know with strategy, everything is going to change and evolve,” Wallace said. “We are going to get behind at some point, so it is just a matter of making the most of every situation that we are in. Right now, we start on the pole, if we lead all the laps – some people may pit and cut it. You are going to get behind at some point, so we’ve got to figure out how to get back up there, but you can’t get complacent on the small victories. It takes a lot of them to get to a big victory, but it’s a good start.”
Chris Buescher laid down the second fastest lap in the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford with a 188.081 mph lap while his teammate and team-owner, Brad Keselowski, qualified third with a lap of 187.891 mph.
Though Buescher was disappointed to miss out on the pole, when asked how important it is to start on the front row, he said, ‘It is huge. This is a very track-position-sensitive race track and with the heat this weekend I think it will be even more. With that in mind, I guess this probably puts us in the non-preferred lane for the start but we will be watching this Xfinity race very closely and try to pull what we can out of it and see what we can learn for tomorrow.”
Joe Gibbs Racing driver, Ty Gibbs, qualified fourth (187.761 mph lap) in his No. 54 Toyota as Ross Chastain rounded out the top five in the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet.
AJ Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Daniel Suárez, Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin completed the top-10 qualifiers.
Playoff drivers who will start outside the top 10 include Kyle Larson (11th), Tyler Reddick (15th), Martin Truex Jr. (16th), William Byron (18th) and Ryan Blaney (23rd).
You can tune into Sunday’s Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at 3:30 p.m. ET on the USA Network with radio coverage provided by PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Starting Lineup:
- Bubba Wallace
- Chris Buescher
- Brad Keselowski
- Ty Gibbs (R)
- Ross Chastain
- AJ Allmendinger
- Kyle Busch
- Daniel Suárez
- Christopher Bell
- Denny Hamlin
- Kyle Larson
- Erik Jones
- Austin Dillon
- Alex Bowman
- Tyler Reddick
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Michael McDowell
- William Byron
- Carson Hocevar
- Joey Logano
- Aric Almirola
- Kevin Harvick
- Ryan Blaney
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Ryan Preece
- Ty Dillon
- Corey LaJoie
- Justin Haley
- Chase Elliott
- Harrison Burton
- Chase Briscoe
- Austin Cindric
- Zane Smith
- BJ McLeod
- JJ Yeley
- Todd Gilliland
