{"id":50916,"date":"2025-04-12T16:35:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T21:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=50916"},"modified":"2025-04-13T08:16:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T13:16:16","slug":"alex-bowman-secures-pole-position-for-food-city-500-at-bristol-motor-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/alex-bowman-secures-pole-position-for-food-city-500-at-bristol-motor-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Bowman secures pole position for Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

BRISTOL, Tenn.\u2014A little ray of sunshine was all Alex Bowman needed to secure the pole position for Sunday\u2019s Food City 500 (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\"\"

Alex Bowman, driver of the #48 Ally Chevrolet, poses for a photo after winning the pole award during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway on April 12, 2025 in Bristol, Tennessee. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Well, not quite all. Bowman also had to turn a blistering lap in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet during Saturday\u2019s time trials at the 0.533-mile short track, and he did just that.<\/p>\n

Bowman covered the distance in 14.912 seconds (128.675 mph)\u2014the fastest lap ever run at Bristol in the NASCAR Cup Series Gen 7 race car. That was good enough to hold off fellow Chevrolet driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (128.563 mph) by 0.013 seconds to secure the top starting spot for the ninth Cup race of the season.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the Busch Light Pole Award that had Bowman salivating. Extensive tire wear in the practice session that preceded qualifying augured a race similar to last year\u2019s spring event at Thunder Valley, where tire fall-off was a crucial aspect of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re all much more prepared than we were last spring,\u201d said Bowman, who ran his lap under favorable cloud cover\u2014with the sun coming out shortly after his qualifying attempt and warming the track slightly on an otherwise chilly day.. \u201cI\u2019m excited for a tire-management race. It\u2019s going to be a lot of fun. We\u2019ll see what we\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started practice with rubber already on the track from the Xfinity cars, peeled it right up and sawed the tires right off. Yeah, confusing why we\u2019re doing it again when we didn\u2019t do it in the fall\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be warmer tomorrow. Maybe that changes it. It\u2019s really difficult to say. I think it\u2019s going to be like that (the spring race), but we\u2019ll find out together, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyle Larson (128.511 mph) qualified third, after winning the pole position for Saturday\u2019s NASCAR Xfinity Series race earlier in the day. Denny Hamlin, winner of the last two Cup events, was fourth in the fastest Toyota at 128.460 mph, and Ryan Blaney topped all other Ford drivers with a fifth-place qualifying lap at 128.305 mph.<\/p>\n

In seven of the last eight Cup races at Bristol, the winner has come from the top five spots on the starting grid\u2014two from the pole and two from the second starting position.<\/p>\n

Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell claimed the sixth and seventh starting spots, with AJ Allmendinger, Carson Hocevar and Justin Haley claiming positions eight, nine and 10, respectively.<\/p>\n

Kyle Busch was 15th fastest in qualifying, but he spun off Turn 4 on his second lap and flat-spotted his tires. Joey Logano, who qualified immediately after Busch, broke loose off Turn 2 and smacked the outside wall with the right rear of his Team Penske Ford. Logano will start 38th on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Jesse Love qualified 19th for his NASCAR Cup Series debut on Sunday in the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service BRISTOL, Tenn.\u2014A little ray of sunshine was all Alex Bowman needed to secure the pole position for Sunday\u2019s Food City 500 (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Well, not quite all. Bowman also had to turn a blistering lap in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":50913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[491,177,16],"class_list":["post-50916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-alex-bowman","tag-bristol-motor-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2209951690.jpg?fit=2498%2C1665&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-dfe","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50917,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50916\/revisions\/50917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}