A 20th-place finish in the Pocono Organics CBD 325 at Pocono Raceway on Saturday garnered Chris Buescher the poke for the second half of the weekend doubleheader, Sunday’s Explore the Pocono Mountains 350.
The top-20 of the finishing order of Saturday’s race was inverted to set the front half of the starting grid for Sunday’s race. As a result, Michael McDowell will join Buescher on the front row after finishing 19th Saturday.
“Track position is very important here at Pocono,” Buescher said. “So we knew how important picking that 20th spot up was, and I was very pleased we were able to get the position. We’ll come out here tomorrow, start on the front row and see if we can’t make some noise with this Acronis Ford.”
Meanwhile, Saturday race winner Alex Bowman will start 20th, sharing row 10 on Sunday’s race grid with Saturday runner-up Kyle Busch.
“Yeah, starting 20th is going to be super difficult here,” Bowman said. “We’ll have a good pit stall, so that will be good. But we know we’re going to have a fast Ally Camaro. We know we’re going to have good pit stops, good strategy. I think Greg’s [Ives, crew chief] strategy was pretty on point today. I’m excited for it. I’m excited to go try to beat that 5 car [Kyle Larson] again.”
After finishing in the back half of the top-20 Saturday, Martin Truex Jr. and Christopher Bell will start in the second row Sunday in the third and fourth positions. Aric Almirola and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will line up iin row three.
“This Smithfield Ford team fought all day to find more speed and just didn’t have it today. Proud of everyone for working so hard to gain as many spots as we could,” Almirola said.” It’s a doubleheader weekend, so the work doesn’t stop now. We’ll regroup and see what we can do to build on tomorrow’s race. We’ll have a better starting spot with the field invert, so we’ll take that as a positive.”
Austin Dillon missed the top-20 Saturday inversion by one position. After finishing 21st on Saturday, he’ll start in the same position for Sunday’s race. Starting positions outside the top-20 Sunday will mirror the finishing positions outside the top-20 from Saturday’s race.
At least seven drivers will give up their official starting positions for Sunday’s race to drop to the back in backup cars after damaging their primary cars in Saturday’s race. They include Kyle Larson, Cole Custer, Corey LaJoie, Ross Chastain, Ryan Newman, Ryan Preece and Anthony Alfredo.
