Michael McDowell, the final driver to take time in single-car qualifying, will start from the pole in the penultimate race of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season at Daytona International Speedway after shooting to the top of the leaderboard at 183.165mph (49.136s).
It is McDowell’s fourth pole of the season and third on a superspeedway. He had never won a pole in the Cup Series before this year.
Todd Gilliland, McDowell’s teammate at Front Row Motorsports, will join him on the front row. Gilliland qualified second at 182.801mph.
Joey Logano qualified third (182.341mph); Ryan Preece, fourth (182.312mph); Josh Berry, fifth (182.197mph) and Chase Briscoe, sixth (182.194mph), rounding out a dominant performance by Ford.
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William Byron qualified seventh (182.057mph). Austin Cindric, also in a Ford, qualified eighth (181.998mph); Kyle Larson, ninth (181.899mph) and Chase Elliott completed the top 10 (181.752mph).
Chris Buescher qualified 13th. Buescher is 16 points above the cutline going into Saturday’s race. Martin Truex Jr., who is 77 points above the cutline, qualified 17th.
Bubba Wallace, the first driver below the cutline by one point, qualified 18th. Ross Chastain, who holds the final spot on the playoff grid, qualified 24th.
Tyler Reddick qualified 25th. Reddick is the Cup Series championship points leader.
Shane van Gisbergen qualified 32nd.
There are 40 drivers entered in Saturday night’s race. Erik Jones will start last after he did not complete his qualifying lap in his Legacy Motor Club Toyota because of a mechanical issue.
Qualifying was the only on-track time Cup Series teams had on Friday.
NEXT: The Coke Zero Sugar 400 at 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday.