Alex Bowman will be on the pole for Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
You can watch it on FS1 or live stream it on fubo TV (FREE trial), Sling TV (discount) or DirecTV Stream (FREE trial and discount).
To earn that top spot, Bowman turned a blistering lap in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet during Saturday’s time trials at the 0.533-mile short track.
Bowman covered the distance in 14.912 seconds (128.675 mph) — the fastest lap ever run at Bristol in the NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen car. That was good enough to hold off fellow Chevrolet driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (128.563 mph) by 0.013 seconds to secure the top starting spot for the ninth Cup Series race of the season.
Kyle Larson (128.511 mph) qualified third, after winning the pole position for Saturday’s Xfinity Series race earlier in the day.
Denny Hamlin, winner of the last two Cup events, was fourth in the fastest Toyota at 128.460 mph, and Ryan Blaney topped all other Ford drivers with a fifth-place qualifying lap at 128.305 mph.
HOW TO WATCH
- WHAT: Food city 500
- WHEN: 3 p.m. EDT Sunday
- WHERE: Bristol Motor Speedway
- TV: FS1
- LIVESTREAM: fubo TV (FREE trial), Sling TV (discount) or DirecTV Stream (FREE trial and discount)
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At a track where he has enjoyed more success than any active NASCAR driver, history awaits Denny Hamlin at Bristol.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver will make his 400th consecutive start in the Cup Series and the 36th of his career at the 0.533-mile oval in Bristol, Tennessee. Hamlin has a circuit-leading four victories at the short track nestled in an area known as “Thunder Valley” near the Tennessee-Virginia state line.
With its high-banked concrete surface ringed by 146,000 seats, Bristol bills itself as “The Last Great Colosseum,” and Hamlin has been on a gladiatorial roll with consecutive victories at Martinsville Speedway and Darlington Raceway. With his next win, he would become the winningest driver in Joe Gibbs Racing history (breaking a tie with Kyle Busch at 56 wins) and join teammate Christopher Bell by notching the second three-race winning streak this season.
“I try not to psych myself out too much about it because I think you sometimes put so much emphasis on those type of situations, and you end up making silly mistakes,” Hamlin told The Associated Press. “I just try to be as even-keeled as I can. It is a new week. It is another great opportunity to win another race. If it just so happens that it is three in a row, that would be awesome and a very proud moment in my career, but it is not something that we set out to do each and every week.”
In seven of the last eight Cup races at Bristol, the winner has come from the top five spots on the starting grid — two from the pole and two from the second starting position.
Alex Bowman gets out of his car after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Chicago. He’ll start from the pole at today’s race in Bristol. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)AP
Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell claimed the sixth and seventh starting spots, with AJ Allmendinger, Carson Hocevar and Justin Haley claiming eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
Kyle Busch was 15th fastest in qualifying, but he spun off Turn 4 on his second lap and flat-spotted his tires. Joey Logano, who qualified immediately after Busch, broke loose off Turn 2 and smacked the outside wall with the right rear of his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. Logano will start 38th on Sunday.
Xfinity Series regular Jesse Love qualified 19th for his Cup Series debut on Sunday in the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
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