Starting Lineup | Qualifying Results
Martin Truex Jr. took the top spot for Saturday night’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway.
Truex Jr. scored the 18th pole of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career. It was the Furniture Row Racing driver’s third of the 2018 season.
Truex becomes the fourth driver in series history to win a Busch Pole on his 450th start joining Dale Jarrett (2001, Dover), Rusty
Wallace (1998, Richmond) and Sterling Marlin (1999, Pocono).
“Out of all the short tracks this is the one I feel like we’ve had the most success at and should have won at by now,” Truex Jr. said.
Truex Jr. is hoping for a better outcome in Richmond than he has had the last two races at Texas and Bristol where he finished 37th and 30th, respectively.
“It’s definitely been a crappy two weeks, but that’s part of racing,” Truex said. “This team, I have confidence in them and everything they are doing. You can’t let these things get you down, it was just circumstances.
“I’m proud of our effort today. We stuck to our plan and it all worked out. Hopefully, we’ll have a good car for tomorrow night.”
Chase Elliott will start outside the front row.
Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson rounded out the top five.
Kurt Busch, Erik Jones, Jamie McMurray, William Byron and Kevin Harvick completed the first 10 qualifiers.
Previous Richmond winners Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch failed to make it out of the first round, qualifying 28th and 32nd, respectively. Busch is going for his third straight win of the season.
“We didn’t make a mock run in practice and then we thought the spread would be about three tenths (of a second),” Busch said. “It wasn’t, it was faster than that. We only ran two laps trying to make sure we preserve out tires for later on deeper into the session. A bunch of those guys ran three laps and obviously we needed that third lap. It would have picked up.
“For some reason the tire here today, even in race trim, your fastest lap was the seventh lap. So just takes awhile for everything to come in. Just trying to short cut it a little bit and it didn’t work out for us.”
Saturday night’s Toyota Owners 400 is scheduled to take the green flag at 6:30 p.m. ET. MRN’s coverage starts at 5:30 p.m. ET.
