WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — It was a great night for NASCAR’s seven-time Most Popular Driver Award winner.
After setting the fastest time in the final four-minute practice session and earning the top starting spot in the first qualifying heat, Chase Elliott won that heat wire-to-wire to win the pole position for Sunday’s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Elliott described track position at the tight quarter-mile track as critical to success.
“It’s going to be tough to win from the third or fourth row,” said Elliott, who will share the front row with Heat 2 winner Chris Buescher, who led every lap of the qualifier and held off new Joe Gibbs Racing hire Chase Briscoe to claim the second starting spot in the 200-lap exhibition race.
“I think the first couple of rows certainly have a massive advantage on the rest of the field. Obviously, anything can happen. You all have been watching long enough to know that anything can happen, and I’m well aware of that. But I think just in a normal circumstance of people not totally crashing each other or whatever — yeah, I certainly would want to be on the first couple of rows and, fortunately, we are. We’ll try to take advantage of that.”
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Heat 3 and 4 winners Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick will start from third and fourth on the grid, respectively. To underscore just how important starting position is, all four heat winners won wire-to-wire after posting the four fastest laps in the final practice sessions to earn their pole positions for the qualifiers.
The top five drivers in each heat advance to Sunday’s Clash. The remaining 19 drivers will compete for two spots in a Last Chance Qualifier (6 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) that precedes Sunday’s main event. The 23rd spot in the field goes to the driver with the highest number of 2024 championship points not otherwise qualified for the Clash.
That provisional belongs to Ryan Blaney, who finished 10th after starting third in a wild first heat that featured three cautions in 25 laps. Should Blaney finish top two in the LCQ, the provisional will be handed to Kyle Larson, who started sixth and finished eighth in the second heat and will have to race his way into the main event.
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After battling a loose condition in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford in the opening eight-minute practice session, Buescher benefited from adjustments made to the car based on considerable preparation time in the simulator.
“We had the changes ready, so when we got there and realized we were just way too loose, we were able to make quick adjustments to get in the ballpark,” said Buescher, who had failed to qualify for the main event in the last three Clash events at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
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Joining Elliott in the main event from Heat 1 were Brad Keselowski, Noah Gragson, Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain. Heat 2 qualifiers included Buescher, Briscoe, Shane van Gisbergen, Bubba Wallace and Daniel Suárez.
Advancing from Heat 3 in addition to Hamlin were reigning Cup Series champion Joey Logano, William Byron, Carson Hocevar and Alex Bowman. Joining Reddick from Heat 4 were Christopher Bell, Ryan Preece, Austin Cindric and Todd Gilliland.