For the second straight year, William Byron will start on pole for the NASCAR Cup Series’ EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver topped sophomore driver Ty Gibbs by 0.015 seconds in the final round to earn his 13th career pole position.
After qualifying, Byron described the differences from last year to this year, which includes repaved areas around the 3.41-mile road course.
“Yeah, so the areas that they repaved have quite a bit more grip as we got the tire rubber kind of rubbered in and got the race track to where it was kind of peak grip level,” Byron said. “I feel like it took probably the first five to eight laps for everyone to make for the track to keep getting faster, and probably for us to understand where the grip level is on the race track to push. I feel like we got to a spot where we understood the race track more. I think my biggest thing, or my biggest concern, is just turn eight and how the dirt is there.
“It’s definitely difficult to get through that corner. Wish that was a little bit better to make the race track flow a little bit nicer, but I feel like the added grip in some areas was nice and a little bit smoother. I don’t think it will really change the race any. I think the braking zones and the passing zones will be the same. It should be a pretty exciting race.”
Behind the front two, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick qualified third. Reddick enters as the defending winner of the event at COTA.
Fellow Toyota driver Christopher Bell qualified fifth. Spire Motorsports’ Corey LaJoie surprised in qualifying to place fifth.
2022 COTA winner, Ross Chastain, wheeled his No. 1 Chevrolet to a sixth-place qualifying effort ahead of the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas in Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin.
Byron’s teammate Chase Elliott and Toyota driver Bubba Wallace rounded out the top-10 qualifiers.
Notably, no Ford drivers appeared in the top 10 of qualifying. Team Penske’s Austin Cindric was the first Ford driver in 11th.
“I’m frustrated not to be in the second round,” Cindric said after his early exit in qualifying. “I felt like we had the car capable. Obviously we missed it by like two hundredths or whatever. Both laps I had guys screw up in turn one, go off in front of me and have to re-merge. Yeah, its just unfortunate.
“We had top-10 speed, still plenty of speed and plenty of opportunity to execute a good race tomorrow. That’s really what we need. Obviously there’s some cars that are extremely competitive right now and I feel like we can be one of them in the mix at race pace.”
The last time that happened was 69 races ago at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in the spring of 2022.
Kaulig Racing’s full-time NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers, Shane van Gisbergen and A.J. Allmendinger, qualified 12th and 14th, respectively.
Sports car racing star Kamui Kobayashi starts 25th in the No. 50 23XI Racing Toyota.