Kyle Busch took the pole for Saturday’s Lily Diabetes 250 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his fourth straight pole in five XFINITY Series events at the track. Busch, a two-time XFINITY winner at Indy, exceeded 181 mph to circle the track at 49.467 seconds. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Erik Jones took the second spot on the charts, circling the speedway at 49.469 seconds in his No. 20 Hisense Toyota.
Kyle Larson, who won at Eldora in the truck series on Wednesday, posted the third-fastest time on the grid, taking a lap of 49.695 seconds in his No. 42 Chevy. Kevin Harvick took the fourth position in his No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevy, laying down a 50.030-second lap while Daniel Suarez was the third JGR Toyota in the top-five, with his No. 19 circling the track in 50.031 seconds.
Rounding out the top-10 was Justin Allgaier in the No. 7 JRM Chevy, who battled a loose condition to take the sixth spot, while Joey Logano, Paul Menard, Ryan Reed, and Brennan Poole took positions seventh through 10th. Notables who didn’t make it past the first round of qualifying include Darrell Wallace Jr., who took the 14th spot on the grid, and Ty Dillon took the 16th spot.
Saturday’s race will be divided into three heats, a format first adopted earlier this year at Bristol as part of the XFINITY Series Dash 4 Cash program. Jones has won the Dash 4 Cash twice this season (Bristol and Dover) while Dillon was the Dash 4 Cash winner at Richmond. Odd-numbered qualifiers will race in the first heat while even-numbered qualifiers will compete in the second heat.
The front row of the main would be the winners of the two heats with lane choice going to which driver was fastest during qualifying. The odd-numbered starting spots would be based on the finishing order of the first heat while the even-numbered starting spots would be based on the finishing order of the second heat.
