Michael McDowell has done it again, the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse will start Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway from the pole position.
McDowell cranked out an impressive 52.310 second (183.063 mph) lap time in the final round of Saturday’s qualifying session, crushing second-place Austin Cindric by nearly two-tenths-of-a-second.
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After the run, McDowell downplayed his role in the pole-winning run as he sees superspeedway poles as a sign that the team has a really fast car rather than a driver turning in an incredible performance from behind the wheel.
“You know, Talladega qualifying, there is not a tremendous amount to it,” McDowell admitted. “But we knew coming here that we would have a shot at the pole. It was a priority for us, a lot of effort went into it. So, you feel that pressure of not making any mistakes and not screwing it up. Just really proud of our team.”
For the 39-year-old driver, this pole marks his sixth of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. Heading into this year, McDowell had never scored a pole through his 16-year NASCAR Cup Series career. It’s been one heck of a turnaround for the driver, who will depart Front Row Motorsports for Spire Motorsports next season.
Of the six poles, five have come in consecutive starts at superspeedway race tracks, McDowell says his Front Row Motorsports team made a concerted effort to churn out perfectly tuned superspeedway cars this season as they were horrendous in superspeedway qualifying in 2023.
“I can tell you that we have found a lot of little, little details go a long way, and it’s not just one thing,” McDowell explained. “And I think I shared this story earlier this year of the story of sort of how we got here, and how we got here was we didn’t qualify last, but it was close to it the previous year, and we were like, ‘Man, we have got to fix this.’ And so we all just put our heads together…”
The extra effort has paid off.
Behind the front row of McDowell and Cindric will be McDowell’s Front Row Motorsports teammate Todd Gilliland, who will start in third, Kyle Busch will start alongside Gilliland in Row 2, as Busch qualified P4 in the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, Denny Hamlin, Harrison Burton, and Daniel Hemric rounded out the top-10 qualifiers in the session.
Talladega, which features unpredictable racing, where a big crash is bound to occur at any time as drivers navigate a thundering drafting pack inches apart at the 2.66-mile superspeedway, will see the Playoff contenders scattered throughout the starting lineup of Sunday’s race.
While four Playoff contenders, led by Cindric in second, will start from inside the top-10, four more will start between positions 11 and 16, and the remaining four will start anywhere from 21st to 36th.
Here is a breakdown of where all 12 Playoff contenders will start in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega:
2. Austin Cindric
5. Ryan Blaney
6. Joey Logano
8. Denny Hamlin
11. Chase Elliott
12. Kyle Larson
14. Tyler Reddick
16. William Byron
21. Christopher Bell
23. Alex Bowman
31. Daniel Suarez
36. Chase Briscoe
