Bowman Grabs Busch Pole For Bristol Night Race

Alex Bowman celebrates the Busch Light Pole Award Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway. (HHP/Jacy Norgaard photo)

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Leading a Hendrick Motorsports sweep of the top three starting spots for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, Alex Bowman captured his first Busch Light Pole Award in nearly two years Friday evening at Bristol Motor Speedway.

As the final car to take time in the second and final knockout round, Bowman toured the .533-mile concrete high banks in 15.142 seconds (126.720 mph) with the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for his fifth career NASCAR Cup Series pole, first at Bristol, and first since the 2023 Daytona 500.

Bowman enters the Round of 16 cutoff race 41 points above the elimination line, meaning it’s not a guarantee he’ll advance to the second round of the playoffs, but the Tucson, Ariz., native feels confident in his chances after earning himself the prime starting spot at The Last Great Colosseum.

“I feel like we’re in a pretty good spot in points, but track position always helps,” noted Bowman. “We qualified like 400th here in the spring (laughter) and studied hard and worked hard to try and come back here and be better. This pole, I think, is evidence that we’ve done that so far.

“We were OK in practice – I feel like I struggled on the top of [turns] one and two a little bit – but we had a really awesome car in qualifying,” he added. “Just really proud of everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, because they gave me a really fast Ally Camaro and that’s what mattered today.”

Joining Bowman on the front row for Saturday night’s 500-lap grind is Kyle Larson, who was the fastest driver in Group A during the pole shootout with a best lap of 15.183 seconds (126.378 mph).

The remaining final round cars filled out rows two through five by their round one qualifying groups, with Group B cars lined up by speed on the inside and Group A cars lined up by speed on the outside.

William Byron and Martin Truex Jr. make up the second row of the grid, with Chase Briscoe filling out the top five starters.

Sixth through 10th were Christopher Bell, Carson Hocevar, Denny Hamlin, Corey LaJoie, and Chase Elliott.

Friday was the first time in Spire Motorsports history that the organization put two cars into the final round of qualifying, with LaJoie set for his final drive for the team before moving to Rick Ware Racing starting Sept. 28 at Kansas Speedway in a ride swap with Justin Haley.

Bubba Wallace (Group B) and Ross Chastain (Group A) were the first drivers in their time trial groups that failed to advance to the second round of qualifying.

They’ll start 11th and 12th, respectively, Saturday night under the lights at The Last Great Colosseum.

Chastain actually missed out on the pole showdown via a tiebreaker after running an identical 15.384-second lap to Elliott in the first round, while Wallace was just a hundredth (.01) of a second away from moving on in his own right.

Other notables starting deeper in the field include playoff contenders Ty Gibbs (13th), Tyler Reddick (15th), Joey Logano (20th), defending series champion Ryan Blaney (22nd), Brad Keselowski (23rd), Austin Cindric (27th), Harrison Burton (34th), and Daniel Suarez (35th), who struggled mightily on his qualifying laps and starts lowest among the 16 playoff drivers as a result.

With just 37 cars in attendance, all drivers made the starting field.

Broadcast coverage of Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol is slated for 7:30 p.m. ET, live on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.