FONTANA, Calif. – Austin Cindric’s momentum from winning the Daytona 500 last Sunday continued Saturday at Auto Club Speedway.
Cindric survived a wild qualifying session to put his No. 2 Team Penske Ford Mustang on the pole thanks to a 41.226-second lap around the two-mile oval. His first career Cup Series pole comes in just his ninth race.
“There is so much learning and so much going on and it is all happening really fast,” Cindric said. “As a driver, you can’t be distracted by the crashes or mistakes or the short amount of time. I had all the data I needed today to learn what I needed to do and go apply it. It is fun to be able to go do that. … It is easy for me to be happy about it, but there are a lot of guys that had pretty rough days and put some teams in some rough spots for the west coast swing. It was pretty awesome. Pretty dramatic. I thought my lap wasn’t going to stand. I thought my (turns) one and two was money but my three and four were a bit conservative mostly because my one and two was money. I didn’t talk myself into going deep like I wanted to in three. Anyway, just an awesome couple of days and an awesome way to start things out but I don’t think it guarantees anything for the race but is certainly a lot of fun to be able to go through that.”
Cindric is the first Daytona 500 champion to win the pole the following weekend since Joey Logano did it in 2015 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Cindric survived a wild qualifying session to put his No. 2 Team Penske Ford Mustang on the pole thanks to a 41.226-second lap around the two-mile oval. His first career Cup Series pole comes in just his ninth race.
“There is so much learning and so much going on and it is all happening really fast,” Cindric said. “As a driver, you can’t be distracted by the crashes or mistakes or the short amount of time. I had all the data I needed today to learn what I needed to do and go apply it. It is fun to be able to go do that. … It is easy for me to be happy about it, but there are a lot of guys that had pretty rough days and put some teams in some rough spots for the west coast swing. It was pretty awesome. Pretty dramatic. I thought my lap wasn’t going to stand. I thought my (turns) one and two was money but my three and four were a bit conservative mostly because my one and two was money. I didn’t talk myself into going deep like I wanted to in three. Anyway, just an awesome couple of days and an awesome way to start things out but I don’t think it guarantees anything for the race but is certainly a lot of fun to be able to go through that.”
Cindric is the first Daytona 500 champion to win the pole the following weekend since Joey Logano did it in 2015 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Erik Jones put in a strong lap in the No. 43 Petty GMS Racing Chevrolet to qualify second with a 41.342-second lap. Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Daniel Hemric and Ryan Blaney will start third through sixth, respectively.
Four drivers – Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, William Byron and Brad Keselowski – had issues during the second round of qualifying.
Logano made contact with the turn four wall during his second round qualifying attempt, but was able to complete his lap and will start eighth. Byron spun coming out of turn four at the end of his lap in round two of qualifying and didn’t complete his lap.
Keselowski was also unable to set a lap time during the second qualifying session after spinning out exiting turn two. Elliott was the last car to make a qualifying attempt in round two, but he also spun exiting turn four in his attempt to knock Cindric off the pole.
Saturday’s qualifying session was the first time NASCAR Cup Series teams have taken part in the new split qualifying program. Teams were split into two groups, with the top-five drivers in each group advancing to the second round of qualifying to determine the top-10 starters for the race.
A number of cars did not turn qualifying laps either due to issues in inspection or crashes in practice.
Kurt Busch’s No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota failed inspection three times Friday. As a result, Busch was not allowed to make a qualifying lap and will have to serve a passthrough penalty shortly after the start of Sunday’s race. He also had a crew member ejected from the track.
In addition, Kevin Harvick, Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace each crashed during practice prior to qualifying and were unable to make qualifying laps. Justin Haley also did not turn a qualifying lap after changing an oil cooler prior to practice. They, along with Busch, will start from the tail of the field Sunday.