Just as we all expected, Shane van Gisbergen’s first career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series pole position came at Richmond Raceway, a 0.750-mile short track oval. I’m, of course, kidding; that was likely on nobody’s bingo card, but SVG, a road course ace, continues to show improved abilities on oval track layouts.
On Friday afternoon, it all culminated in a pole position for Friday night’s Black’s Tire 250 at Richmond.
Starting Lineup: Black’s Tire 250 at Richmond
After claiming the pole position, van Gisbergen was smiling ear-to-ear, and was genuinely shocked that he was able to top a stacked field of short track racers in the session.
“Yeah, wow. But yeah, thank you to the Spire guys and HendrickCars.com Chevy; pretty awesome. We had a pretty good week, and these guys helped me get comfortable. Pretty amazing to do that. I’m stoked,” van Gisbergen said in a post-qualifying interview on FS1. “Yeah, see how it goes in the race. We’ve got Cup practice and qualifying now. Man, I don’t know what to say, that’s awesome.”
Van Gisbergen, a New Zealand native, will now look to secure his first career Truck Series win. Heading into this weekend, SVG has 14 career NASCAR National Series wins (eight in the Cup Series and six in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series). If he can claim the win on Friday night, it’ll mark his first career National Series win on an oval.
However, it won’t be an easy task. Lining up alongside SVG on Row 1 will be Kaden Honeycutt, the driver of the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota, who narrowly missed out on the pole position by a razor-thin margin of 0.014 seconds.
Chandler Smith, another talented short track racer, will start from the third position in the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150, and he’ll be joined in Row 2 by Grant Enfinger.
Nick Leitz, Parker Eatmon, Ty Majeski, Andres Perez De Lara, Stewart Friesen, and Tyler Ankrum rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Friday evening’s race.
Layne Riggs, who was the fastest driver in Friday’s practice session, was only able to muster the 11th-fastest lap time in the qualifying session.
With 39 drivers vying for 36 positions in the field for the Black’s Tire 250, three drivers were unable to transfer to the starting lineup for the race.
Kasey Kleyn (driving the No. 27 Rackley W.A.R. entry), Caleb Costner (No. 93), and Justin Carroll (No. 90) were the three drivers who will head home after the qualifying session.
