By David Morgan, Associate Editor
HAMPTON, Ga. – Michael McDowell continued his superspeedway qualifying dominance on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, capturing his fifth pole of the season with a lap of 30.926 seconds, 179.267 to lead the field to green in Sunday’s Quaker State 400.
“I don’t think you ever go into it like, ‘Oh, we’ve got this.’ I knew that we would have a shot at it, but I knew when Blaney went faster than us that first round, even though it was only by a few hundredths, you know that it’s gonna come down to executing everything perfectly, where if you’re talking about a tenth, it’s hard to make up a tenth,” McDowell said of his qualifying run.
“But it’s easy to mess up a couple hundredths, so you’re nervous about doing your job well to make sure you give yourself the best chance. I think Daytona a few weeks ago we had everybody covered by more than a tenth and so it was less nerve racking and then this one I felt like it was gonna take everything being done perfect to have a shot at it.”
McDowell will be joined on the front row by defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney, who will look to kick off his title defense in style at the track where he was a part of a three-wide photo finish back in February.
The remainder of the top-10 starters will be McDowell’s Front Row Motorsports teammate Todd Gilliland, along with Josh Berry, Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, William Byron, and Chase Briscoe.
Playoff drivers Alex Bowman and Harrison Burton will start 11th and 12th, respectively, followed by Chase Elliott in 16th, Brad Keselowski and Ty Gibbs in 19th and 20th, Martin Truex, Jr. in 22nd, regular season champion Tyler Reddick in 23rd, Christopher Bell in 26th, and Daniel Suarez in 30th.
Denny Hamlin will start shotgun on the field in 38th after mechanical issues during qualifying left him some three seconds off the pace.
“Something in the powertrain certainly, was not up to speed. So, they’re gonna look into it and then hopefully come up with the fix. But certainly, there’s something wrong there that they’ll get fixed overnight,” Hamlin said.
“Certainly, it’s not ideal, right? We wish we would be upfront with good track position, but, overall, I think, you know, with the way this race plays out, you’re gonna have some want to race, some not. And so, I think, we didn’t have any false hopes that we were gonna really qualify that well here…
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