Christopher Bell did it again in NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Kansas Speedway with his third straight pole win.
Bell (P) was the final driver to take time in qualifying and went to the top at 179.336mph (30.111s). While it is Bell’s third straight at the track, it’s his fourth career pole at Kansas Speedway. All four pole wins have come in the Next Gen era (six races at the track).
“I’ll tell you what, it’s the people that work on this race car that made the statement,” Bell said of his 12th career pole. “Today, we showed up with probably our best Kansas car we’ve ever had. It’s always been a great track for us to qualify at, and it seems like whenever we go race, we’re always that third to seventh [place] range and today it was different. It felt really, really good in practice and I felt really comfortable driving the car, and then they were able to duplicate the qualifying balance.”
Ty Gibbs qualified second at 179.099mph. Kyle Busch ran third at 178.642mph.
Tyler Reddick (P) qualified fourth at 178.767mph and Joey Logano (P) completed the top five qualifiers at 178.024mph. Reddick is the defending winner at Kansas Speedway.
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William Byron (P) qualified sixth at 178.247mph; Ryan Blaney (P), seventh at 177.317mph; Denny Hamlin (P), eighth at 178.218mph; Chase Briscoe (P), ninth at 175.965mph and Daniel Suarez (P) rounded out the top 10 at 178.130mph.
There are four playoff drivers starting outside the top 10.
Kyle Larson (P) qualified 11th and teammate Alex Bowman (P), 12th. Austin Cindric (P) qualified 17th.
Justin Haley qualified 23rd with his new Spire Motorsports team. Corey LaJoie, previously with Spire Motorsports and now with Rick Ware Racing after swapping rides with Haley, qualified 27th.
Jimmie Johnson ran 35th in a third Legacy Motor Club entry. Sunday will be Johnson’s seventh start of the season.
Chase Elliott (P) was 38th of 38 drivers in qualifying. Elliott made a lap with an ill-running engine in his Chevrolet. The team will make an engine change before Sunday’s race.
NEXT: The Hollywood Casino 400 at 3 p.m. ET Sunday (USA).
(P) denotes playoff driver