Austin Dillon celebrated his 29th birthday by capturing the pole for Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Dillon won his fifth career pole, and second of the season, with a lap of 49.734 seconds, 192.544 mph in the second and final round of the single-car qualifying.
“Danny Stockman (crew chief) and the boys did a great job building a fast car and you want to go out there and make some noise and they did that,” Dillon said. “I give all the credit to those guys. Tomorrow it’s up to us to keep that car up front and hopefully make a real iconic win for RCR and everyone here at Talladega.”
Qualifying Results | Talladega Pole Winners
The pole winning run came a day after NASCAR officials confiscated the rear deck lid of the No. 3 Chevrolet.
“I knew it wasn’t going to hurt our performance,” Dillon said. “It’s not from a speed and penalty-wise, it wasn’t something. We were just fixing a problem and it turned out we didn’t need to do that. I’m sure Stockman was spun out about it, but speed-wise, I knew it wasn’t going to hurt us and moving forward, I hope that NASCAR takes into effect the entire story of it and whatever is dealt our way, we’ll handle it and go on from there.”
Aric Almirola, who topped the first round, qualified second with a lap of 49.841 seconds, 192.131 mph.
“I think we got pretty close to backing up what we ran in the first round there but I felt like the wind picked up a little bit more,” Almirola said. “I don’t know if that was it or what the case was. All in all, it was a great run for us. I am happy about starting on the front row with good track position to start the race and a good pit stall. All those things matter.”
Clint Bowyer, Brad Keselowski and Daniel Hemric rounded out the top five.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Michael McDowell completed the top 12.
Kurt Busch qualified 14th after his No. 1 Chevrolet failed the Optical Scanning Station twice. His car chief Ryan Bergenty was ejected for the weekend. The team will also have a 15-minute hold in practice next weekend at Dover International Speedway.
Tyler Reddick qualified the No. 62 Chevrolet for Brendan Gaughan, who returned home for his son’s first communion. Gaughan will return for the race.
