NASCAR News: McDowell wins Cup pole at Gateway

Michael McDowell claimed his third Busch Light Pole Award of the season — and of his career — but this one came at a quirky flat track, not a superspeedway, where the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, a former Daytona 500 winner, is expected to excel.

McDowell toured the 1.25-mile irregularly-shaped World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway track in 32.468 seconds (138.598 mph) in the final round of time trials to claim the top starting position for Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 NASCAR Cup Series race.

In the opening round, McDowell topped all qualifiers at a track-record pace of 139.241 mph (32.318 seconds)

Fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric will start beside McDowell on the front row after a final-round lap at 138.134 mph (32.577 seconds). Cindric’s Team Penske teammate, Ryan Blaney, qualified third at 137.982 mph.

Interestingly, McDowell and Cindric were the only two drivers in the final round to downshift to third gear in Turns 3 and 4 on their qualifying laps.

“In particular at Talladega and Atlanta (where McDowell won his first two poles this year), the driver’s not a big part of whether you’re going to qualify well,” McDowell said. “You still have to execute. You still have to get through the gears. I don’t want to take anything away from that standpoint, but it really is a matter of how fast a race car your team brought you.

“Even today, we’re on the pole because I have a really fast race car. I had more pressure to execute my part on a flat track like this, where you’re upshifting twice, downshifting twice … heavy brake zones — all those things. So it’s more rewarding from that point to go out there and execute and do it.”

Christopher Bell, last Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 winner, was fourth fastest at 137.669 mph. Tyler Reddick qualified fifth, followed by Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Ty Gibbs and Kyle Busch, last year’s winner at WWTR.

Busch was the only Chevrolet driver to make the final round. For the first time this season, no Hendrick Motorsports driver qualified in the top 10.

Starting Lineup