Qualifying report

NASCAR Cup Charlotte II

Harvick edges Bowman for Charlotte pole

Kevin Harvick will start off the second round of the Chase in the best position possible.

Jim Utter

Edited: Oct 7, 2016, 10:39 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Polesitter Kevin Harvick, Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet

Harvick led the first and final rounds of knockout qualifying Thursday night, using an average lap speed at 196.029 mph to top Alex Bowman for the pole for Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The pole is Harvick’s first of the season – odd considering Harvick is just one of three Sprint Cup Series drivers to lead more than 1,000 laps this year. His most recent pole came in March 2015 at Phoenix.

Chase Elliott will start third, Kyle Busch fourth, Tony Stewart fifth, A.J. Allmendinger sixth, Martin Truex Jr. seventh, Carl Edwards eighth, Denny Hamlin ninth, Joey Logano 10th, Jimmie Johnson 11th and Kasey Kahne will start 12th.

The pole is the 16th of Harvick’s career.

“The car was too loose the round before and I got to the green better that time and got through (Turns) 1 and 2 good and felt like I gave up something in (Turns) 3 and 4 coming to the checkered,” Harvick said of his final round performance. “This has just been a fun car to drive today. Hopefully, we can get it dialed in for race trim.

“We struggled when we first rolled off the truck in race trim and we just got it better and better and better. We applied all that stuff to qualifying so hopefully we’ll what we learned in qualifying we can apply to the race trim stuff and go from there.”

Round 2

Bowman set a blistering pace in the 10-minute second round with an average lap speed of 196.200 mph. Harvick, who led the first round, came closest to matching it with a lap at 195.404 mph.

Also advancing to the final round were: Elliott, Kahne, Truex, Hamlin, Allmendinger, Logano, Kyle Busch, Edwards, Stewart and Johnson.

Stewart had to abandon his first qualifying run in the round when he came up suddenly on Jamie McMurray, who was just completing his run. Stewart returned to pit road to cool his car and made a second attempt with just over a minute remaining, which got him in the final round.

“We lacked a little bit of speed in qualifying trim but we were really good in race trim in practice,” said Keselowski, who will start 20th.

Danica Patrick was knocked out of the Top 12 by Stewart but here 13th starting position for Saturday night’s race will still be her second-best start of the season (she started 11th at Sonoma, Calif.).

Round 1

Harvick, who was fastest in Thursday’s lone practice session, led the way in the first 20-minute qualifying session with an average lap speed of 194.756 mph.

He was followed by Allmendinger, Bowman, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.s, Hamlin, Edwards, Kenseth, Keselowski and Kyle Busch.

All 12 drivers remaining in the Chase advanced to the second round of qualifying. Kyle Larson, who was eliminated from title contention following last Sunday’s race at Dover, Del., was knocked out of the Top 24 in the final minute by Matt DiBenedetto.

“I don’t think we expected (DiBenedetto) to bump us out there and we waited too long to go back out,” Larson said. “I think we would have ran faster and made it to the second round if we had made it out there.”

Once again, several teams missed part of the first round of qualifying because they failed to clear pre-qualifying inspection in a timely fashion.

At least 10 cars were still in the process of inspection when the first round was set to begin. The last of those, Paul Menard, made it out to the track with four minutes remaining.

Cla#DriverManufacturerTimeGapMph 1 4 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 27.547 196.029 2 88 Alex Bowman Chevrolet 27.551 0.004 196.000 3 24 Chase Elliott Chevrolet 27.585 0.038 195.759 4 18 Kyle Busch Toyota 27.660 0.113 195.228 5 14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 27.660 0.113 195.228 6 47 A.J. Allmendinger Chevrolet 27.680 0.133 195.087 7 78 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 27.717 0.170 194.826 8 19 Carl Edwards Toyota 27.756 0.209 194.553 9 11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 27.811 0.264 194.168 10 22 Joey Logano Ford 27.828 0.281 194.049

CLICK HERE for complete starting lineup

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Kevin Harvick leads the way in Thursday's Cup practice

Next article Bowman on his future: "These races may be the rest of my Cup career"

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Mercedes explains why its upgrade made its F1 car harder to drive

Formula 1

Singapore GP

Mercedes explains why its upgrade made its F1 car harder to drive

How Geri Halliwell helped Christian Horner deal with fan hate

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1 58 min

How Geri Halliwell helped Christian Horner deal with fan hate

Max Verstappen stars with 15-place charge in 45 minutes: 'I learned a lot and had fun'

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

Portimão

1 h

Max Verstappen stars with 15-place charge in 45 minutes: 'I learned a lot and had fun'

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

Formula 1

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts