A drawing among the top-10 teams in the NASCAR Cup Series owner points standings for Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway resulted in an all-Ford front row, with Aric Almirola on the pole and Ryan Blaney in the second starting position.
Almirola’s latest pole is his second in the last five races and his fifth front-row start in the 14 races since most starting grids have been set by drawings with NASCAR’s return from a lengthy coronavirus-induced break.
The Busch brothers, Kurt and Kyle, drew second-row starting positions for the Texas race, with Kurt Busch drawing the third starting spot and Kyle Busch the fourth.
“I know they’ve been working on the track, but you are still trying to put rubber down,” Kyle Busch said. “With the smooth surface, it’s hard to understand what you’re feeling with your car, because you can think you’re tight, you’ve got all the grip in the world, you’re going around the corner and, then, ‘Boom,’ it just busts loose right out from under you with no warning. That’s why the older race tracks, the more aged racetracks – the Atlantas, the Californias – you’re sliding the whole time, so you’re already against the slide. You don’t have maximum grip. You’re already playing with it and trying to get the most out of yourself and the car that you possibly can. At Texas, you’re not just locked down, you’re locked in solid; then, it can jump out from under you in a hurry. We were okay there last year but would like to have a good run there on Sunday with our Interstate Batteries Toyota.”
The Busch brothers will be surrounded by Fords as they take the green flag Sunday, as the third row also was claimed by Ford drivers. Almirola’s Stewart-Haas teammate Kevin Harvick drew the fifth starting position for his 700th-career Cup Sereis race, and Blaney’s Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski drew the sixth starting spot to begin the race in the third row.
Other top-10 starters include Denny Hamlin in seventh, Chase Elliott in eighth, Joey Logano ninth and Martin Truex Jr. in 10th.
“We’re excited to go to Texas this weekend and to have fans at the track,” Truex said. “It was great to have them back at Bristol for the All-Star Race, so it will be cool to have them there as well. I know Eddie [Gossage, Texas Motor Speedway President] and everyone at the track has put a lot of effort into this weekend, so we want to put on a good show for them. This will definitely be the hottest it’s ever been for one of our races in Texas, so it will be interesting to see what that does to the track and how slick it will get. Hopefully, we can take some of what we learned at Kentucky into Texas this weekend and keep improving on our 550 [horsepower] program as we get into the second half of the season.”
Just as the top-12 of the 40-car starting grid was set by drawing, so were the remainder of spots inside the top-36, with a drawings for the 13th through 24th-place teams and the 25th through 36th-place teams in owner points determined the corresponding areas of the starting grid. The remaining four starters were ordered by their positions in the owner standings.
