DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Coors Light Pole Qualifying on Saturday morning at Daytona Int’l Speedway saw a pair of young guns notch their best-ever NASCAR XFINITY Series starting positions.
For the second time in as many days, a driver scored their first-career pole, with Brandon Jones sweeping both rounds of XFINITY qualifying and earning the 21 Means 21 Pole Award after posting a time of 48.788 seconds (184.472 mph) on his final lap.
“This is unreal,” Jones said of scoring the pole in his 39th career XFINITY start. “This is (an) awesome (way) to start off for myself, Nexteer, Menards, Anderson Maple Syrup … this is awesome, awesome.”
“I don’t even know what to say. I’m at a loss for words right now. I’ve just got to try to calm down here and put it all together for tonight. I’m so proud, though. What a run.”
20-year-old Jones follows in the footsteps of 18-year-old Kaz Grala, who scored his first-career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series pole during that division’s qualifying session on Friday.
Joining Jones on the front row will be 2015 Daytona XFINITY winner Ryan Reed, who qualified second with a lap of 48.846 seconds (184.253 mph) and will start on the front row for the first time in his XFINITY career.
“It’s gonna be great to start up here today,” Reed said. “Coming down here, the guys work so hard through the offseason to prepare for this race and we showed that in qualifying. They really perfected our piece … I wanted that pole so bad, but to start on the front row at Daytona is huge. It’s a great way to start the season, get some momentum going and hopefully we can get another (win) in the race today.”
Chevrolets swept the top five positions on the grid, with Brennan Poole, rookie Daniel Hemric and Cup regular Ty Dillon falling in behind the front row.
Brad Keselowski,Tyler Reddick, Blake Koch, Kasey Kahne, Spencer Gallagher, Elliott Sadler and Darrell Wallace Jr. made up the remainder of the 12 drivers who advanced through both knockout rounds in Saturday’s qualifying session.
While Michael Annett was the first driver to miss the cut for the final round, qualifying 13th for JR Motorsports with a lap of 49.264 seconds (182.689 mph), the more surprising storyline from the first round was the lack of speed from the Toyota fleet.
In a shocker, all three Joe Gibbs Racing entries missed the final round, with Matt Tifft slotting in 14th as the fastest Toyota in the field, Erik Jones landing 18th and reigning series champion Daniel Suarez only mustering the 21st-fastest time.
Regardless of their single-car speed, Jones said that the lackluster qualifying effort does not change their strategy for the race.
“I don’t think this really changes a lot; we were going to be racing pretty hard and trying to get up to the front,” Jones said. “Our Hisense Camry is fine in the pack, I think. We never made a mock run, so I never really knew what our single-car speed would be like.”
“Do we wish we could’ve qualified better? Sure, but it’s Daytona and where you start doesn’t make a huge difference. We’ll work our way up and hopefully be there at the end.”
Other notables mired deep in the pack include rookies William Byron (17th) and Cole Custer (20th), Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regular Aric Almirola (22nd) and two-time NASCAR Whelen Euro Series champion Anthony Kumpen (30th)
Morgan Shepherd, Mike Harmon, Stephen Leicht and Mark Thompson were the four drivers who failed to qualify for the 40-car field.
The PowerShares QQQ 300 takes the green flag at 3:30 p.m. ET, with live coverage on FOX Sports 1, the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.
Complete qualifying results can be viewed on the next page…
