NASCAR Cup Series YellaWood 500 at Talladega Starting Lineup

After a 2024 campaign that included six pole positions in the NASCAR Cup Series with Front Row Motorsports, Michael McDowell has brought that superspeedway qualifying prowess with him to Spire Motorsports, winning the pole for Sunday’s YellaWood 500.

Piloting the No. 71 Chevrolet, which this weekend at Talladega has a brand-new sponsor on board in Carolina Handling, McDowell blasted to his eighth career pole in the NASCAR Cup Series, and his second of the season, with a lap time of 52.481 seconds.

McDowell was able to take the pole position despite posting the fifth-quickest time in the preliminary round of NASCAR Cup Series qualifying. However, an improvement from round to round, and some others faltering on their second lap, allowed the Phoenix, Arizona-native to remain atop the leaderboard.

Chase Briscoe has been a beast in qualifying this season, and was quickest in the opening round of time trials, but only had a lap fast enough to qualify in the runner-up position, coming up 19 one-thousandths of a second slower than McDowell.

Kyle Busch was the third fastest driver in the second round, while Austin Cindric, the Spring winner at Talladega Superspeedway, will start from fourth. Ryan Preece, who has become well-known for wild rides on the superspeedways, rounded out the top-five starters for Sunday’s 500-miler.

Josh Berry will roll from sixth, with NASCAR Cup Series Playoff drivers Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney sitting in seventh and eighth. NASCAR Cup Series rookie Riley Hebrst scored his best start of the season, in ninth, with his 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace sitting just behind him in 10th.

Of the eight drivers still alive in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, there were only three who managed to advance to the final round of qualifying on Saturday. That means, for five drivers (including last weekend’s winner Denny Hamlin) the beginning portion of the race will see them fighting to get in position to earn stage points.

William Byron will start the best of those five in 13th, with Joey Logano three spots back in 16th, Denny Hamlin in 17th, Kyle Larson in 19th, and Chase Elliott starting the worst of the eight postseason drivers in 25th.

Each of the 40 drivers entered in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway all turned a qualifying lap around the 2.66-mile superspeedway, the slowest of which was Casey Mears in the Garage 66 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, who posted a lap time of 53.930 seconds, just 1.2 seconds off 11th-place starter, Alex Bowman.

The YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway will take place on Sunday, October 19 at 2:00 PM ET on NBC, Motor Racing Network (MRN), and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.

Starting Lineup:

Round 2 Qualifying Results:

Round 1 Qualifying Results: