Kyle Larson topped NASCAR Cup Series qualifying Saturday afternoon at Kansas Speedway with a 183.730 mph lap. It’s his first pole this season and the 22nd of his Cup Series career.
Larson described his lap, saying, “Yeah, the qualifying lap felt really good. You’re watching SMT and you can see the drivers are starting to hold it easy wide open in (turns) one and two. In three and four, some guys were getting tight and (Chris) Buescher was able to run a good three and four.
“I kind of had a plan on the line,” Larson continued, “that I wanted to run and just try to match it with the throttle. Thankfully, everything went great. My balance felt really good. I felt like I hit my marks and came up to speed through three and four good. It was a perfect feeling lap.”
Front Row
Chris Buescher will start beside Larson on the front row for Sunday’s AdventHealth 400. The front-row pairing opens up the possibility of a similar finish to last year’s race as Buescher finished second behind Larson by a mere margin of 0.001 seconds.
“I mean, it’s definitely ironic and really cool,” Larson said. “I think it adds to the storyline of what happened last year. You’ll probably build some anticipation for the race tomorrow. But yeah, I won’t be thinking about it, I guess, when we’re rolling around under caution. But yeah, it’s just ironic, funny and cool all at the same time.”
Buescher also commented on starting beside Larson for Sunday’s race.
“We could have manufactured a better story if we tried, could we? That was a really awesome lap for this Ford Mustang,” Buescher said. “I’m proud of this group. Practice was really solid and Texas last week was awesome so we came into here with a lot of high hopes and it’s really showing up already. Missed it by that much, but we’re in a good spot and that will put us in clean air for the start of this race at a track we’ve been really good at.”
Christopher Bell will start third, followed by Tyler Reddick and Joey Logano to complete the top five. Ty Gibbs, William Byron, Daniel Suárez, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top 10 fastest drivers in the qualifying session.
Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway will air at 3 p.m. ET on FS1 with radio coverage provided by MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
