William Byron earned the Busch Pole for Sunday’s Jockey Made in America 250 presented by Kwik Trip (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Byron topped the board with a lap of 132.049 seconds at 110.359 miles per hour in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Byron’s teammate, Kyle Larson, will start alongside him on the front row with a lap of 132.233 seconds at 110.205 mph in the No. 5 Chevrolet.
“We struggled a little bit off the truck but we had some good changes in mind,” Byron told CNBC after his pole run. “It was fast in race trim on the long run … It’s nice to see Hendrick 1-2 and on the pole.”
AJ Allmendinger will start third for Sunday’s race at the 4.048-mile course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, followed by Tyler Reddick and Austin Cindric. Denny Hamlin, Matt DiBenedetto, Ross Chastain, Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez and Chris Buescher rounded out the top 12 drivers in the final round.
The biggest surprise of the first round was Chase Elliott’s starting spot. The winner of five of the last seven road-course races will start 34th after the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports was unable to complete a lap as cautions came out during the two times he was attempting his full speed lap.
There were a pair of cautions in the first 20-minute round of qualifying. The first came early in the session when the No. 78 LiveFast Motorsports Ford of Kyle Tilley stalled on course, while the second came in the closing minutes when Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota lost power during his qualifying lap.