XFINITY rookie rules Daytona qualifying for first career-first pole position
RELATED: Full starting lineup
Daniel Suarez rolled to the Coors Light Pole Award in Saturday afternoon qualifying for the NASCAR XFINITY Series at Daytona International Speedway.
Suarez, 23, will start first in Saturday night’s Subway Firecracker 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) after posting a fast lap of 180.256 mph in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota. The pole award is the first of Suarez’s XFINITY Series career, which spans just 16 races.
“To be honest, I can’t describe with words what I’m feeling right now,” said Suarez, a native of Monterrey, Mexico. “First of all, I want to thank everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing. It’s unbelievable. I mean, my car is super-fast. We felt that speed in the first practice yesterday. We knew that we had a fast car in traffic in the draft, but we didn’t know exactly what to expect with a single-car run, and the car was as fast or even better.”
Brian Scott will share the front row for Saturday’s 250-miler after qualifying second at 179.827 mph in the Richard Childress Racing No. 2 Chevrolet. David Ragan, Suarez’s teammate at JGR, secured the third starting spot for his first XFINITY Series start of the season.
Joey Logano and Erik Jones completed the top five. Defending series champion Chase Elliott will start 11th in the JR Motorsports No. 9 Chevrolet for the 15th of 33 races this season.
Suarez was also fastest during the first of two rounds, posting a best lap of 180.607 mph. Current points leader Chris Buescher, driving the Roush Fenway Racing No. 60 Ford, was 13th-fastest in Round 1, just two-thousandths of a second behind Richard Childress Racing‘s Brendan Gaughan and just missing the 12-driver cut to advance into the final round of single-car qualifying.
Chris Cockrum, Jeff Green, Mark Thompson and Derek White failed to qualify for the 40-car field. Former Daytona 500 winner Derrike Cope initially was on the list of non-qualifiers, but Thompson’s time was disallowed after a post-qualifying inspection, putting Cope in the field.