Michael McDowell made it a clean sweep of NASCAR Cup Series pole positions at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway this season following his performance on Saturday.
The Front Row Motorsports driver ran a fastest speed of 183.063 mph, edging fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric for his sixth pole of the season. McDowell also started on pole in the spring race at Talladega.
“Talladega qualifying there’s not a tremendous amount to it, but we knew coming here that we would have a shot at the pole,” McDowell said. “It was a priority for us. A lot of effort went into it, so you feel that pressure of not making any mistakes and not screwing it up. Just really proud of our team. I mean, it’s very difficult to come down to these superspeedways and have cars that we have and continue to bring cars that we’ve brought every weekend, so really proud of the effort.
“It’s amazing. We sort of had this in mind, that today would be a day that we’d come down here and try to get the rest of the superspeedways locked down and really proud that we were able to accomplish it.”
Behind the front row, McDowell’s teammate Todd Gilliland qualified third ahead of Kyle Busch and defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney. Joey Logano made it five Ford drivers in the top six.
Austin Dillon and Denny Hamlin start seventh and eighth, while Harrison Burton (ninth) and Daniel Hemric (10th) complete the first five rows.
Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott (11th) and Kyle Larson (12th) start just outside the top 10. Other playoff drivers that qualified outside the top include: Tyler Reddick (14th), William Byron (16th), Christopher Bell (21st), Alex Bowman (23rd), Daniel Suárez (31st) and Chase Briscoe (36th).