Aric Almirola wins Busch Pole at Atlanta

Aric Almirola on pole

Aric Almirola topped the leaderboard at 181.473 mph in the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford on Friday, winning the Busch Pole Award for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (2 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

This is Almirola’s first pole at Atlanta, and the second of his career — the first came in 2012.

Right behind the No. 10 Ford was Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford at 180.428 mph.

Rounding out the top five in qualifying were Clint Bowyer in the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford (180.410 mph), after leading the first two rounds of qualifying, Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (180.328 mph) and Daniel Suarez in the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford (180.216 mph).

For Almirola, he made 234 Monster Energy Series starts between his pole awards. That ranks as six-longest stretch of all time, behind Michael Waltrip (456), Paul Menard (358), David Gilliland (259), Mark Martin (256) and Kevin Harvick (254).

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]The final practice session for the Monster Energy Series is Saturday at 12 p.m. ET on FS1.

Two car chiefs ejected

Two car chiefs have been ejected from Atlanta Motor Speedway after their teams’ respective cars failed pre-qualifying inspection multiple times.

The No. 36 Front Row Motorsports Ford of driver Matt Tifft and No. 52 Rick Ware Racing Chevrolet of driver BJ McLeod failed inspection multiple times Friday prior to three rounds of Busch Pole qualifying. Their car chiefs — Brandon Lee (36) and Mike Chance (52), respectively — won’t be able to return to the garage during the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 weekend.

Previously, a car chief was not ejected unless a team failed inspection three times. Under NASCAR’s 2019 deterrence model, two failures lead to a car chief ejection.

Last month NASCAR introduced a system where race-winning teams found in violation of the rule book post-race would be disqualified. Additionally, post-race inspection is done at track following the event, with penalties — if any– handed out then instead of following a mid-week teardown at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina.

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