Chase Elliott scored the pole for Sunday’s 1000Bulbs.com 500 to lead a sweep of the top four spots for Hendrick Motorsports in qualifying at Talladega Superspeedway.
Elliott took the pole – the eighth of his career and fourth this season – with a lap of 49.692 seconds, 192.707 mph.
“It was really faster than I was expecting it to be today, which is nice,” Elliott said. “Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and our team do such a good job at these places; really, Hendrick, as a whole, and our body shop and our engine shop doing the job that they do coming to these places and have fast race cars and really, it’s kind of on them.”
Elliott finished 38th last weekend at Dover and heads into Sunday’s race 11th in the playoff standings, seven points below the cutline. The previous time Elliott finished 38th was at Pocono in July and he went on to capture the win the following week at Watkins Glen.
“It was a tough week last week, obviously, so it’s just nice to come back and get a pole,” Elliott said. “Obviously, it’s a long race and anything can happen. So, we’ve got to take advantage of a good pit pick and we’ll go to work from there and see what happens.”
Alex Bowman (192.552 mph), William Byron (192.258 mph) and Jimmie Johnson (191.556 mph) rounded out the top four, respectively, for the Hendrick Chevrolets. Bowman and Byron are currently seventh and eighth, respectively, the playoff standings.
Defending race winner Aric Almirola qualified fifth with Brad Keselowski (playoff), Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Clint Bowyer (playoff), Ryan Blaney (playoff) and Joey Logano (playoff) giving Ford the rest of the top 10.
“We need to work with the Stewart-Haas cars, the Roush cars, Front Row, we need to all work together when we can,” said Logano, who has three Talladega wins. “It’s hard to do because everyone’s got a goal of their own, but we’ve got to figure out ways to work together.”
Erik Jones was the best qualifying Toyota driver in 11th.
Last week’s winner Kyle Larson, who is already locked into the Round of 8, qualified 12th.
“It will be interesting to see how hard the guys below or around the cut off are racing,” Larson said. “Thankfully for me, we don’t have to worry about that. But we still want to get a good finish and avoid the wrecks. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow, but it’s always wild.”
Other playoff drivers in Sunday’s field include Kevin Harvick (15th), Martin Truex Jr. (18th), Kyle Busch (26th) and Denny Hamlin (40th).
Hamlin’s Toyota suffered an engine failure during his attempt.
“We were 15 seconds from finishing dead last in this race, so I am very, very fortunate that it happened right there at the end of the lap,” Hamlin said. “It was fortunate and unfortunate, but way more fortunate there than it was unfortunate.
“Obviously, we’re going to be starting in last, but we’ll get through there and be fine by the time the race gets going. We’ll get this FedEx Camry hopefully up front by the end of the race.”
