BRISTOL, Tenn. — After a day in which Toyotas dominated the speed charts early at Bristol Motor Speedway, it was a Ford that topped Coors Light Pole Qualifying for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series as Tyler Reddick scored his third career series pole in dominating fashion.
Reddick topped the final two knockout rounds and posted a time of 14.884 seconds (128.917 mph) in the final round, beating his competition by nearly a full tenth of a second to garner the number one starting position for the UNOH 200 (8:30, FS1, MRN, SirisuXM).
“Well, we get to start first in a race that could be all about track position, so that’s a huge bonus,” said the California native and driver of the No. 29 Cooper Standard Ford F-150. “Trust me, I hadn’t forgotten how long it’s been since we last sat on a pole in the Truck Series. It’s just a huge testament to all of our guys at Brad Keselowski Racing. We’ve been fighting to get better qualifying speed and I think today shows we’ve made a lot of progress.”
“Now we get to not really worry about too much and focus on going forward and winning a race. The bottom looks really fast right now, but we’ll wait and see how it looks after this modified race tonight. I think it’s going to be a very interesting race, and hopefully we can get it done at the end.”
Despite him winning the pole, Reddick’s Toyota challengers were not far behind him as positions two through six were all occupied by Tundras after the third and final round.
Final practice leader Daniel Suarez will roll off from the front row, qualifying second (14.963/128.236) in his No. 51 ARRIS Toyota.
Row two will see ThorSport Racing teammates Cameron Hayley and Ben Rhodes line up side-by-side, qualifying third and fourth, respectively. KBM rookie Christopher Bell rounded out the ‘Fast Five’.
Five-time season winner William Byron was sixth ahead of Johnny Sauter, Brett Moffitt, Cole Custer, Kaz Grala, Jesse Little and Daniel Hemric among the rest of the 12 cars who advanced through all three rounds of qualifying.
Ben Kennedy’s No. 33 GMS Racing entry was the first truck that failed to advance out of round two, and he will slot in 13th for the race alongside teammate Spencer Gallagher.
Other notables who start outside the top dozen include XFINITY regular Brandon Jones (15th), John Hunter Nemechek (16th), two-time series champion Matt Crafton (17th) and dirt track racing standouts Rico Abreu (20th) and Stewart Friesen (23rd).
Abreu had a hard crash in turn two during round two, and will utilize a backup truck for the main event.
Austin Cindric was the final truck to make the starting field on speed during round one, qualifying 27th of the 27 trucks locked in on speed and beating 17-year-old Jake Griffin by .003 of a second, but had to weather two separate spins in turn two and nearly-flat spotted tires before he was able to celebrate being locked into the race.
Griffin, Clay Greenfield and Cody McMahan were the three drivers who failed to qualify for the 32-truck field.
Audio with pole qualifier Tyler Reddick:
Audio with third-quick Cameron Hayley:
