Harvick edges Bowman for Charlotte pole

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	#	Driver	Manufacturer	Time	Gap	Mph
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