Shane van Gisbergen won the pole for Sunday’s Cup race on the streets of Chicago.
The pole is the third of van Gisbergen’s Cup career. He earned the No. 1 starting spot with a lap of 88.338 mph Saturday. His most recent pole came in Mexico. He went on to win that race. He won the inaugural Chicago Street Race in 2023 in his Cup debut.
“That was epic,” van Gisbergen said. “Our team did a great job. … I’m a lucky boy.”
Michael McDowell (87.979 mph) will join van Gisbergen on the front row after qualifying second.
Carson Hocevar (87.824 mph) qualified third, his best starting spot on a road course. Tyler Reddick qualified fourth with a lap of 87.779 mph. Chase Briscoe will start fifth after a lap of 87.734 mph.
Richard Childress Racing put both of its drivers in the top 10. Kyle Busch (87.639 mph) will start sixth and Austin Dillon (87.303) qualified 10th.
Reigning Supercars champion Will Brown will make his second career Cup start after qualifying 19th with a lap of 86.990 mph.
Points leader William Byron, Chase Elliott, who is second in the points, and Denny Hamlin, who is fourth in points, each did not make a qualifying attempt and will start at the rear of the field.
Byron and Elliott hit the wall in separate incidents in practice and their teams skipped qualifying to repair their cars. Hamlin’s car blew an engine on his first lap of practice.
Byron and Elliott will be joined at the back of the pack by Hendrick Motorsports teammates Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson. Bowman will give up his 11th starting spot and Larson will relinquish his 14th starting spot for repairs.
Bubba Wallace, who holds the final playoff spot with eight races left in the regular season, will start 37th after an incident during his qualifying run.
This was the first race since the Daytona 500 where more than 40 cars were entered. There were 41 cars entered, meaning one car would fail to qualify.
Katherine Legge bumped Corey Heim for the final spot. Heim’s qualifying session was shortened when his 23XI Racing car hit the wall.
“It’s a lot of pressure to come in with only 20 minutes of practice on a street course where there’s no room for error to put it in the show,” Legge said. “I actually feel pretty good about it now. We would have been a lot faster, I think, had I not kept nicking the wall. I’ve given my crew a lot of work to do from that, but we had to keep pushing to put it in the show. I’m really proud of this team, and I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow.”
Made a mistake on my first lap and bent the toe link. Tried to get everything I could out of it after that but clearly wasn’t enough. That’s completely my fault and still trying to process all of it. Thank you @23XIRacing for a car plenty capable enough to make the race.
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