It was a long wait for Noah Gragson to find out if he would be sitting on the pole in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Homestead, after posting an extremely fast time early on in the single-vehicle qualifying session.
But, as Alex Bowman, the third-to-last driver to post a lap time in the session, drove onto the racetrack, the dreams of a maiden pole at NASCAR’s top level quickly washed away for the Front Row Motorsports driver.
With an incredibly quick time of 31.982 seconds (168.845mph), the Tucson, Arizona-native drove his No. 48 Ally Financial Chevrolet to the pole position for the Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Clearing second place by nearly eight-hundredths of a second, Bowman collected his sixth career pole position in the NASCAR Cup Series — and his first on an intermediate racetrack.
On Sunday, the 330-race veteran of the NASCAR Cup Series will lead the field to green, starting alongside Josh Berry, who served as a fill-in driver for Bowman while he recovered from a back injury in 2023.
STARTING LINEUP: 2025 Straight Talk Wireless 400
Berry is the most recent winner in the NASCAR Cup Series, after taking a shocking victory in the late stages of last weekend’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — his first career NASCAR Cup Series win, and the 101st win for Wood Brothers Racing.
In the last eight NASCAR Cup Series events, Wood Brothers Racing has placed its No. 21 Ford Mustang inside the top-10 in qualifying an impressive six times.
Noah Gragson, who moved to Front Row Motorsports for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, will start from third, and also has a similar relationship to Alex Bowman, filling in while the Hendrick Motorsports driver recovered from a concussion in 2022.
Chase Briscoe was able to put together a solid qualifying effort to start fourth, the highest-qualifying of the Toyota GAZOO Racing drivers. Daytona 500 winner William Byron rounded out the top-five.
PRACTICE RESULTS: 2025 Straight Talk Wireless 400
Ryan Blaney posted the sixth-fastest time in qualifying on Saturday, while John Hunter Nemechek, Austin Cindric, Bubba Wallace, and AJ Allmendinger make up the first five rows of the starting lineup for Sunday’s event.
Kyle Larson, who is attempting to sweep all three NASCAR National Series events this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway will start from 13th-place, after scrubbing the wall during his qualifying effort.
Other notables include: Joey Logano (12th), Christopher Bell (16th), Chase Elliott (18th), Tyler Reddick (20th), Kyle Busch (22nd), Denny Hamlin (23rd), Ross Chastain (25th), and Brad Keselowski (32nd).
The Straight Talk Wireless 400 will take place on Sunday, March 23 at 3:30 PM ET on FS1, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
