Michael McDowell and Joey Logano have flip-flopped starting positions from a week ago with McDowell earning his first career NASCAR Cup Series pole Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The Front Row Motorsports driver went to the top of the leaderboard in single-car qualifying at 178.844mph (30.999s). He was the final competitor to get on track in the final round of qualifying after setting the pace in the first round.
McDowell’s first pole comes in his 467th start.
“That’s awesome,” McDowell said. “I’m just really proud of all the men and women at Front Row Motorsports — two weeks in a row we’ve sat on the front row. We’ve got a really fast Benebone Ford Mustang. That was a good lap but it really comes down to team and execution and they’ve done a really good job.
“We need to back that up with a good result tomorrow, but I’m really proud of everybody at Front Row. It’s a big effort for us; got both cars in the top five, which is awesome.”
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Logano, who bested McDowell last weekend for the pole in the Daytona 500, will start second and is the defending race winner at Atlanta. His fastest lap was 178.424mph
Kyle Busch qualified third (178.235mph), Todd Gilliland fourth (178.080mph), Kyle Larson fifth (177.829mph), Ryan Blaney sixth (177.658mph) and Chris Buescher seventh (177.176mph).
Austin Cindric qualified eighth (177.147mph), Chase Briscoe ninth (177.125mph) and Austin Dillon completed the top 10 (177.102mph).
There were seven Ford drivers who advanced into the final round of qualifying. The other three drivers were from the Chevrolet camp.
Daytona 500 champion William Byron qualified 11th with a lap of 176.853mph.
There are 37 drivers qualified for the Ambetter 400. Erik Jones ended up last at 164.554mph after fighting to keep the car from spinning in Turns 3 and 4 in the first round of qualifying.
Saturday’s session was the only on-track activity for the Cup Series prior to the green flag just after 3 p.m. ET Sunday.