TALLADEGA, Ala. — Chase Briscoe won last season's fall race at Talladega Superspeedway. Now, he enters Sunday with the best starting position.
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The Joe Gibbs Racing driver won the pole on Saturday afternoon with a lap of 51.466 seconds. This marked his first pole win of the season and the 10th of his career. It put him in a position to control the lanes early while racing for stage points.
MORE: Talladega Superspeedway Starting Lineup
"The lap, for my standpoint, was relatively smooth, I guess, outside of just bouncing around," Briscoe said after qualifying. "So yeah, just tried to, I mean, as cliche as it sounds, just tried to push my foot as hard as I could on the pedal, like my son (Brooks) always tells me.
"Just with how much we're bouncing, sometimes you can come up off of wide open. So yeah, I just tried to literally push the thing through the floorboard, and I don't know if that even made a difference, but in my head, it was doing something."
Austin Hill qualified second with a lap of 51.498 seconds. This marked his third top-10 start of the season and his first at Talladega Superspeedway.
The rest of the top 10 included Connor Zilisch (51.518), Shane van Gisbergen (51.565), Chris Buescher (51.593), Christopher Bell (51.609), Alex Bowman (51.621), Ty Gibbs (51.678), Denny Hamlin (51.734), and Kyle Larson (51.812).
Only six of the 16 Chase drivers qualified inside of the top 10. This group included Briscoe, Buescher, Bell, Gibbs, Hamlin, and Larson.
The other Chase drivers included Daniel Suarez in 13th (51.821), Joey Logano in 16th (51.848), William Byron in 17th (51.851), Chase Elliott in 18th (51.862), Ryan Preece in 19th (51.862), Bubba Wallace in 25th (51.980), Carson Hocevar in 26th (51.984), Ryan Blaney in 27th (52.036), Austin Cindric in 28th (52.036), and Tyler Reddick in 33rd (52.146).
Qualifying outside of the top 10 does not necessarily mean that these drivers will miss out on stage points. An early wreck could shake up the field, as could a third line forming and pushing more cars to the front of the pack.
The Cup Series race takes place at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday. NBC will provide coverage with Leigh Diffey, Jeff Burton, and Steve Letarte in the booth.
