Weather continues to be the story of the weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series qualifying session has been rained out, forcing the starting lineup to be set by NASCAR’s metric system. That places Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott on the pole for Sunday’s USA Today 301.
“Yeah, I mean obviously we’d rather have an actual pole, for sure,” Elliott began. “But you know, circumstances being what they are, fortunately our team has been performing at a really solid level over the past couple of months. The reality of it is that it put us in a position to have a good starting spot for a rainout situation.
“That’s just the reality of the weekend. Certainly, we’ll take a good starting spot, and more importantly, take a really good pit pick there on pit road.”
Last week’s winner at Iowa Speedway, Ryan Blaney, will start alongside Elliott. William Byron, Christopher Bell and Alex Bowman complete the top five.
Team Penske’s Joey Logano, defending race winner Martin Truex Jr. and Ross Chastain make up sixth through eighth. A pair of Ford drivers in Brad Keselowski and Josh Berry complete the top 10.
NASCAR also moved the Xfinity Series start time up 30 minutes with rain likely to threaten throughout the afternoon.
In addition to the Xfinity Series race, the Cup Series race start time was moved up to 2:06 p.m. ET for Sunday. The original start time was 2:35 p.m.