NASCAR at Atlanta: Michael McDowell wins first career pole for Sunday’s Cup Series race

Michael McDowell had the fastest car in qualifying, and Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway will be his first starting on the pole.

The NASCAR Cup Series veteran, a recent Daytona 500 winner, ran the lap in 30.999 seconds after being the last competitor to get on the track during the final round of Saturday’s qualifying session. McDowell will start on the front row alongside Joey Logano for the second straight week.

“Yes, it is for sure my first career pole in the Cup Series, and I’m proud of that, but at the same time, it’s more of a testament to my team,” said McDowell, who will make his 467th start as a Cup driver Sunday. “This qualifying session, you have to execute everything perfectly. But having a fast race car is what it’s all about, and I’m really proud of my guys.”

It’s the first pole for Front Row Motorsports in nearly a decade — since David Gilliland led the field to green at Daytona in July 2014.

Front Row, a Ford team, has a technical alliance with Team Penske and uses the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. The new race cars looked fast at qualifying.

After McDowell and Logano, Front Row’s Todd Gilliland will start fourth, Penske’s Ryan Blaney sixth, RFK’s Chris Buescher seventh, Penske’s Austin Cindric eighth and Stewart-Haas’ Chase Briscoe ninth.

“I qualified fifth, Kyle Busch qualified third, so there’s two Chevys in the top five,” Kyle Larson said. “That’s an improvement on where we were last year. I was the only Chevy in the final round last year. It pays absolutely nothing to qualify on the pole in any of these races.”

Kyle Busch, two-time Cup winner at Atlanta, wins Truck Series race

Kyle Busch remembers hearing a roar during qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the early 2000s.

He called the 1.54-mile speedway one of the fastest tracks on the NASCAR Cup Series’ circuit and felt the speed his first time there. The two-time champion has a pair of Cup wins at Atlanta in 2008 and 2013 — and added another, winning Saturday’s Truck Series race.

“Just the roar of the engine and the speed that you’re carrying,” Busch said. “This place is pretty intimidating. Great, fun place to race — I’ll still say I enjoy the old track more. But we got what we got here now, and hopefully the fans enjoy a good show.”

The surface of Atlanta’s track was repaved and narrowed in 2021, and Busch was the first driver to blast the proposed redesign after winning an Xfinity Series race on the old track.

“It’s changed a little bit, and it’s brought a lot of speedway racing to it,” Tanner Gray, who finished fourth, told The Charlotte Observer on pit road. “You have to think more about the moves that you make. Especially with the crazy tailwinds today, you really had to think about your runs, your moves and where you disperse your energy.”

Looking back at The Big One: ‘Least amount of fun I’ve had’

Chris Buescher said he’s never disliked this race more.

Twenty-three cars were collected in a late wreck that led to William Byron’s Daytona 500 win last week. The sport continues evolving, such that drivers primarily strive to save more fuel as opposed to racing as fast as they can at all times.

Buescher criticized that development. He felt his pace was roughly five seconds off, all so that in the end, he could be taken out in The Big One as well.

“That was the least amount of fun I’ve had in a Daytona 500 for a really, really long time, and I’ve hit head-on there in Turn 1,” Buescher said. “That being said, we had really fast Ford Mustangs, really proud of RFK for that. Not much chance to show it when 70, 80 percent of the race is spent fuel-saving.”

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