DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Chase Elliott turned a lap at 194.045 mph during qualifying Friday at Daytona International Speedway, winning the pole position for Saturday night’s Cup Series race at the track and giving sagging Chevrolet a much-needed NASCAR boost in the process.
Elliott, who sprained his right ankle earlier this week “horsing around in the pool,” has twice started on the pole at the season-opening Daytona 500. Now the 22-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver will start up top in Daytona’s summer race as he goes for the first Cup Series win of his career.
Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman will join Elliott on the front row. Bowman won the pole for this year’s Daytona 500 in the debut race for the Chevy Camaro.
Chevrolet has been mostly noncompetitive since Austin Dillon won the Daytona 500 in February, with Ford and Toyota pulling away in the standings. A Chevy driver hasn’t been to victory lane since the season opener and hadn’t really gotten close to a checkered flag until this past Sunday, when Kyle Larson challenged Kyle Busch on the last lap at Chicagoland Speedway but wound up second.
Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski qualified third in a Ford Fusion, while seven-time series champion Jimmie Johnson will start fourth, giving Chevrolet and Hendrick three of the top four spots in the lineup.
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick will start fifth in a Ford, with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Busch 15th in a Toyota Camry. Martin Truex Jr. will start 13th and was the top-qualifying Toyota.
Busch, Harvick and Truex have made it largely a three-driver race to the series championship with the regular season more than halfway over. Busch and Harvick each has five wins in 2018, while Truex has won three times, including twice in June.
Each has one Cup Series championship: Harvick in 2014, Busch in 2015 and Truex last year.
Supra switch
Toyota will be the latest NASCAR manufacturer to switch models and go with a true sports car.
The Japanese automaker unveiled the Supra on Thursday at Daytona, saying it will make its debut in the Xfinity Series in 2019.
Toyota has fielded the Camry on the second-tier circuit since 2007, tallying 142 victories, four manufacturer championships and two driver titles. Toyota will continue to use the Camry in the top-tier Cup Series in 2019, with no plans to race the Supra on that circuit.
Rivals Chevrolet and Ford have made recent changes to their Cup Series models, with Chevy struggling in the first year with the Camaro and Ford announcing in April it would shift from the Fusion to the Mustang in 2019.
Waid chosen
Longtime racing writer Steve Waid is the 2018 recipient of the Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR media excellence.
NASCAR and its Hall of Fame made the announcement Friday at Daytona.
Waid spent nearly 50 years covering NASCAR. He began in 1972 for the Martinsville (Virginia) Bulletin before a 10-year stint at the Roanoke (Virginia) Times & World News. Waid moved to Grand National Scene in 1981 and later became publisher of NASCAR Scene and NASCAR Illustrated. He remained with those publications until his retirement in 2010.
Waid will be honored during the NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony in January and featured in an exhibit in the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He was one of eight nominees for the Squier-Hall Award, which was created in 2012 and named after former NASCAR broadcasters Ken Squier and Barney Hall.