McDowell Grabs Fifth Cup Pole Of 2024 At Atlanta

Michael McDowell celebrates the Busch Pole Award at Atlanta Motor Speedway. (Jacob Seelman photo)

HAMPTON, Ga. – Michael McDowell’s season of speedy dominance continued on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, after the driver of the No. 34 wheeled his team to a series-best fifth pole in 2024, tied with NASCAR Cup Series playoffs points leader Kyle Larson. 

After 16 years of competing at the sport’s top level, McDowell flew to the first P1 starting spot of his career at Atlanta in February, earning him a season sweep at the 1.54-mile track this year. His 179.261 mph (30.926 seconds) lap was not only good enough to best reigning series champion Ryan Blaney by 0.073 seconds, but it also marked his fifth front-row start of drafting races in 2024 and his fourth pole on those styled tracks.

“This is just great,” said McDowell. “I’m just so proud of everyone at Front Row [Motorsports]. We knew we’d have a shot, based on [our speed at] Daytona, to sit on the pole here … but to get this Ford Mustang its fifth pole of the year is amazing.

“We’ve still got Talladega [Superspeedway] ahead of us, too, as well as Watkins Glen [International] … so we’re trying to win the most poles this year and we’re going to keep fighting hard.”

Can McDowell finally convert one of those poles into a victory this season? He believes so, but tipped that handling would be a key component of being successful in race trim Sunday.

“One thing I think we did well here in the spring, is that we led a lot of laps and were up front all day,” McDowell noted. “At Daytona, we had a lot of speed and just got crashed at the end. I think it’s a lot of compromise, because our qualifying efforts haven’t hurt our race efforts, but it shows that we just have a lot of speed in our cars right now.”

Ford dominated the seven of the top-10 starting spots, including all of the top-five, with Todd Gilliland and Josh Berry taking up the second row and with playoff drivers Austin Cindric, Joey Logano and Chase Briscoe posting the fifth-, seventh-, and 10th-best times, respectively.

Chevrolet claimed the remaining top-10 positions with Larson (sixth), Austin Dillon (eighth) and William Byron (ninth) representing the Bowtie Brigade. Playoff drivers Harrison Burton and Alex Bowman barely failed to advance into the final round of qualifying, slotting in at 11th and 12th-fastest.

Chase Elliott in 16th and Brad Keselowski in 19th will have a bit of a steeper climb come Sunday.

Unequivocally, the biggest surprise to come from the single-car time trials at Atlanta was the fact championship favorite Denny Hamlin qualified dead last as the only driver in the 33-second bracket, over two seconds off the pace from Blaney, who was fastest in the first round of qualifying.

“Something in the powertrain, certainly, was not up to speed,” Hamlin explained after his abysmal qualifying lap. “[Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota Racing Development] are going to look into it and, hopefully, come up with a fix. But certainly there was something wrong there that they’ll work on overnight.

“NASCAR never leaves you stuck with what you’ve got if you have a problem, but certainly, we’ll have to show them what exactly is wrong,” he continued. “If it’s not something [visible] to the eye on the outside, then they’ll dig into the internals to try and figure it out. But certainly the lap time made it clear that we had an issue.”

The most recent winner at the 1.54-mile track Daniel Suarez will have the next-steepest climb of the 16 playoff drivers, rounding out the top-30, with Christopher Bell four spots ahead of him in the 26th-spot.

Collectively, the Toyota fleet struggled in qualifying, with 16th-seeded Ty Gibbs leading the charge as the 20th-fastest in the 38-car field. Next-best were Martin Truex Jr. and regular-season champion Tyler Reddick in 22nd and 23rd, respectively.

Sunday, Sept. 8, McDowell and Blaney will lead the field to green in the playoff-opening Quaker State 400 available at Walmart at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.