As Ryan Preece crossed the start-finish line to end Friday’s NASCAR Cup Series qualifying session for Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway, Ross Chastain was all smiles on pit road, and for good reason.
As Preece’s lap time secured him the fourth starting spot for Saturday night’s regular-season finale event, it also meant that Chastain would take home the Busch Light Pole Award, his first Cup Series pole award since Watkins Glen in 2024.
Starting Lineup: Coke Zero Sugar 400
A week removed from being eliminated from Chase contention due to a blown engine at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Chastain was very complimentary of his Trackhouse Racing team and the ECR powerplant under the hood of his No. 1 Chevrolet.
“For our Wendy’s Watermelon Lemonade Chevy, I’m not sure that we expected that leaving the shop, to be honest,” Chastain admitted. “I mean, you always try to be efficient. You’re trying to have the least amount of drag when you come to Daytona, and then you’re trying to put the most grip in it with this new package. Hats off to Trackhouse and ECR, you know, to have our issues last week and to come right back and redeem all of us.”
Chastain took the top qualifying spot with a 48.808-second (184.396 mph) lap time in the final round of the qualifying session, which was 0.051 seconds faster than Chris Buescher, who clocked in second-fastest.
This marks the third pole of Chastain’s NASCAR Cup Series career and it comes in his 285th start.
Austin Hill, who was revealed earlier this week to be the full-time driver of the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet for next season, will start Saturday night’s race from the third position, and he’ll be joined by Preece in the second row of the starting grid.
Riley Herbst, Shane van Gisbergen, Connor Zilisch, Austin Cindric, Joey Logano, and Kyle Larson rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
With 41 cars on the entry list for this event, one driver and team will pack up and head home after the qualifying session. Unfortunately, for Gray Gaulding and the No. 66 Garage 66 team, they were the slowest of the bunch and failed to make the race with a 50.058-second lap time.
