HAMPTON, Ga. — Taking the phrase “beating the boss” to a new level, Christopher Bell notched his first-career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series pole by doing just that on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Bell outran team owner Kyle Busch in the second and final round of knockout qualifying to claim the Keystone Light Pole Award after a lap of 30.643 seconds (180.922 mph) in his No. 4 JBL Toyota.
The pole-winning effort comes in Bell’s 32nd-career start.
“I think we’ve got a really fast JBL Tundra,” Bell said. “Rudy (Fugle, crew chief) and the crew have been working really hard on this part of our program. Last week at Daytona, we had our best superspeedway qualifying effort in a long time … so to be able to come here to Atlanta and get a pole is something that we’re really proud of and I’m excited to see what we’ve got for the race this afternoon.”
Bell added that without Busch’s support and information from running the Truck race in addition to his duties at the Cup level, he wouldn’t be as strong as he is this weekend.”
“It’s a huge team effort. Having Kyle as our teammate throughout the course of the weekend is really big for us. He’s one of the best in the garage area at giving feedback and describing what he needs, so whenever he can describe what he needs like that it allows the rest of us to get better. It’s just a win-win situation for all of us at Kyle Busch Motorsports.”
After winning the NASCAR XFINITY Series pole earlier in the day, Busch qualified second in the No. 51 Cessna Toyota Tundra, posting a time of 30.782 seconds (180.105 mph) as he seeks his fifth career Truck win at AMS and first since 2009 in the Active Pest Control 200 (4:30 p.m., FS1, MRN, SiriusXM).
Brad Keselowski Racing teammates Austin Cindric (30.817/179.901) and Chase Briscoe (30.851/179.702) qualified third and fourth in their Ford F-150s, followed by the GMS Racing Chevrolet Silverados of Alex Bowman and Johnny Sauter.
Matt Crafton, Timothy Peters, Chase Elliott, Noah Gragson, John Hunter Nemechek and Kaz Grala completed the front six rows in qualifying.
Brett Moffitt’s Red Horse Racing Toyota Tundra was the first entry that failed to advance through to the pole round, with Moffitt qualifying 13th after a lap of 31.032 seconds (178.654 mph).
Other notables knocked out in round one included ThorSport Racing teammates Grant Enfinger (14th), Ben Rhodes (15th) and Cody Coughlin (16th); Cup regular Austin Dillon (18th), dirt modified star Stewart Friesen (20th), Joe Nemechek (22nd) and Regan Smith (23rd).
With 35 trucks at the race track, J.J. Yeley, Norm Benning and Jennifer Jo Cobb failed to make the field for Saturday evening’s race.
Full qualifying results can be viewed on the next page…
