Kyle Larson scored the pole for Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway with a lap of 15.015 seconds, 127.792 mph.
Larson swept all three rounds to capture his third pole of the season – seventh of career – and first at BMS.
“Our DC Solar Chevy has been really good all day, both in the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series,” Larson said. “I felt a little off in first practice, but we got it going good in the second practice and then was fast every round in qualifying.”
Larson has combined to lead 472 laps and has posted an average finish of 5.7 in his last three starts at Bristol.
“It’s my favorite track,” Larson said. I have yet to get a win here. We’ve been close so many times. I feel like Kyle (Busch) and I are the two best here, but he always seems to edge me out. Hopefully this weekend is a little different.”
Chase Elliott qualified second with a lap of 15.030 seconds, 127.665 mph to make it an all Chevrolet front row.
“It was close. It wasn’t perfect. But I got through (Turns) 1 and 2 pretty good and maybe gave up a little bit in (Turns) 3 and 4,” Elliott said. “But I mean, heck, two-hundredths of a second. I don’t really know how to characterize that. But, I just hate we couldn’t grab a pole.”
Kyle Busch, who has won the last two Monster Energy Cup Series races at Bristol, was third.
“There’s some fast guys we’re around, so we’ll just have to take it as we go and see what happens,” Busch said. “Certainly wish we would have qualified on the pole for a better pit selection, but we’ll take what we can get.”
Paul Menard and rookie William Byron rounded out the top five. For Byron it’s his best start in 24 career races.
“I think we are getting close, so tomorrow should be a lot of fun,” Byron said. “It’s a long race, so I’m just going to prepare myself for that and try to be around in the last 50 laps.”
Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Aric Almirola, Kurt Busch, Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. completed the top 10.
The top groove was the preferred line in qualifying.
“Kyle (Busch) actually texted me during the first practice and said he was disappointed in me that I didn’t go straight to the top,” Larson said. “But I said I’m used to all those pavement racers that don’t run the top up until about halfway through the second practice. So, I got fed up with me and (Ricky) Stenhouse being the ones to dust the top off every time we come here that we let the pavement guys finally nut-up and get up to the top.”
Earlier in the day it was announced that the start time of Saturday night’s race was moved up an hour to 6:30 p.m. ET (NBCSN/NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) due to potential weather.
