DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Front Row Motorsports lived up to its name Friday evening at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway.
After the teammates tied at 49.218 seconds (182.860 mph) in Round 1, McDowell laid down a Next Gen qualifying record lap of 49.136 (183.165) to best Gilliland for the pole for Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400.
It’s the fourth No. 1 starting position of both the season and his career.
“It’s so many things, but for superspeedways in particular it’s just speed,” McDowell said in a press conference. “If I was gonna give you a percentage I would say the driver is 10 percent qualifying and the car is 90 percent. You’ve got to hit your marks. You’ve got to hit your shifts just right, which it’s come down to 10 rpms. You get a report and if you’re 10 or 15 rpms off, they’re like, ‘Hey, you missed it.’ But it’s all about speed and we’ve had a lot of speed in our cars.
“[World Wide Technology (Ill.) Raceway] was different for sure. That’s not a superspeedway and we got the pole there. I don’t know what the stats are, but this year I think 10-12 times we’ve made it to the second round in qualifying and not just superspeedways but everywhere, so more than anything our cars just have speed. Having speed is important and then the level of execution that it takes.”
Both McDowell and Gilliland are in must-win situations to make the playoffs. While McDowell has a Daytona 500 victory and a win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, Gilliland is in pursuit of his first career triumph.
“It’s just an amazing effort by everyone at Front Row Motorsports,” Gilliland said. “I think it was in Atlanta where we were fairly close to getting the front row, so to come back here we’ve had super fast cars at every superspeedway this year, so just to be able to keep cranking them out like that has been really impressive.
“Michael is a tough one to beat. He’s been pushing us to new levels since I got to the Cup Series and we continue to do that. Second isn’t too bad and we’ll be on the front row and race him from there.”
Ford swept the top six starting positions. Joey Logano will roll off third with a Stewart-Haas Racing trifecta of Ryan Preece, Josh Berry and Chase Briscoe filling spots four through six. William Byron, Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott complete the top 10.
“Everybody back at Stewart-Haas Racing and the 4 team, all four teams did a really good job,” Berry said. “We definitely improved a lot from what we had here in February but as well as at Talladega, so that’s exciting. Everybody has been digging hard. The Fords as a whole have a lot of speed. We have a lot of cars up front and hopefully, we can stay up there tomorrow night.”
Martin Truex Jr. is the highest starting Toyota in 17th.
Erik Jones had a mechanical issue while getting up to speed and didn’t post a lap. He’ll start dead last – in 40th – as it’s a full field with four open cars entered.