William Byron has won the pole position for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America.
Pre-race coverage begins Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC with Countdown to Green. The race is scheduled to take the green flag at 2:40 p.m. ET.
STARTING LINEUP: Road America Cup race
MORE: Details for Sunday’s Cup race
Byron, who was 11th-quickest in Saturday’s practice, posted a lap of 110.359 miles per hour around the 14-turn, 4-mile road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin to capture his sixth career Cup pole.
“We struggled a little bit off the truck (Saturday), but we had some good changes in mind,” Byron told CNBC. “It was fast in race trim the last run … We’ve struggled this year on road courses and kinda got back to a basic setup and put it all together today.”
Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson, who won the most recent Cup road course race at Sonoma, will start alongside Byron on the front row.
Behind them in Row 2 will be Xfinity regular A.J. Allmendinger and Tyler Reddick.
Reddick had a potential pole-winning lap in the final moments of qualifying before going wide at Turn 12. He later spun in the final corner, Turn 14, to complete his lap.
Reigning Xfinity champion Austin Cindric will start fifth. Denny Hamlin will start sixth.
The first round of qualifying was red-flagged twice for Kyle Tilley and Bubba Wallace stopping on track in separate cases.
Reigning Cup champion Chase Elliott, winner in five of the last seven Cup road course races, had a potential flyer nullified on both occasions.
After the green came back out with less than two minutes to go in the round, he didn’t make it back to the start/finish line in time to start a proper lap. As a result, he will start 34th.
“Yesterday in practice, we had a couple incidents and NASCAR added a little bit of time, so our only hope was that they would add a little bit of time to let the guys on pit road make it back around,” Elliott told NBCSN.
“That’s a gamble, and I don’t expect them to do that. But you also have to be prepared in that situation. Just one of those situations where I don’t know what you really do it. Just go on down the road and hope the race is better and hope our car’s where it needs to be.”
Seven cars will go to the rear for the start of Sunday’s race.
Kyle Busch and Ryan Preece were already heading there in backup cars after incidents in Saturday practice. Now joining them are Wallace (transmission), Tilley (unapproved adjustments), Justin Haley (engine) and Josh Bilicki (unapproved adjustments).
Quin Houff (unapproved adjustments) was also confirmed to go to the rear minutes before Sunday’s green flag.
