{"id":51073,"date":"2025-04-26T12:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T17:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=51073"},"modified":"2025-04-28T08:04:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T13:04:05","slug":"zane-smith-captures-first-career-pole-for-talladega-cup-race-talladega-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/26\/zane-smith-captures-first-career-pole-for-talladega-cup-race-talladega-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Zane Smith captures first-career pole for Talladega Cup race \/ Talladega Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2013 Front Row Motorsports maintained its strong position out front at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with 24-year driver Zane Smith convincingly claiming the first pole position of his NASCAR Cup Series career \u2013 the third consecutive at the track for his team.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Zane Smith, driver of the #38 TitleMax Ford, poses for photos after winning the pole award during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on April 26, 2025 in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Smith, the 2022 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday\u2019s Jack Link\u2019s 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the sport\u2019s biggest track with two-time series champion Kyle Busch starting alongside Smith on the front row \u2013 his best start since earning pole position at Dover, Del. last Spring.<\/p>\n

Smith earned his first pole position with a lap of 182.174 mph in the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford \u2013 bettering Busch\u2019s time by a slight .132-second on the 2.66-mile circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously a lot of speed,\u2019\u2019 said Smith, who was fastest in opening-round time trials and improved that time in the final round. \u201cJust really proud of how our whole team has been working together before our one-week break [last week] and I feel like that one-week break was perfect not to reset but to digest and think about what we need to re-build on.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now we\u2019re off to a good start for this next long stretch. Proud of the speed and everything we\u2019ve been doing, just need to execute a little bit better but a ton of speed this weekend. Long race tomorrow and a lot of things are going to happen and go on, but obviously we have the speed to do it. We\u2019ll see how it goes.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Seven Fords, a pair of Chevrolets and a single Toyota advanced to that 10-car final round.<\/p>\n

Reigning series champion, Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano and Roush Fenway Keselowski\u2019s Ryan Preece will start from row two.<\/p>\n

Richard Childress Racing\u2019s Austin Dillon, RFK\u2019s Chris Buescher, Penske\u2019s Austin Cindric, Wood Brothers\u2019s Josh Berry, Penske\u2019s Ryan Blaney and Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Ty Gibbs (the only Toyota) rounded out the second round qualifiers.<\/p>\n

Defending race winner Tyler Reddick will roll off 26th in the 23XI Racing No. 45 Toyota. Championship points leader, Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 William Byron, will start 16th on the 39-car grid.<\/p>\n

NOTEBOOK<\/b><\/p>\n

*KESELOWSKI\u2019s OPPORTUNITY<\/b><\/p>\n

Brad Keselowski is a former NASCAR Cup Series champion \u2013 claiming the title in 2012 in only his 16th full-time year competing in the series \u2013 and leads all drivers with six Talladega Superspeedway trophies. That\u2019s all encouraging, but the 41-year old owner-driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford would really like to resume that big track magic this weekend and jumpstart an uncharacteristically \u201coff\u201d start to the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Keselowski is still racing for his first top-10 of the year \u2013 an 11th place showing at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway is his best result and he sits an uncharacteristic 31st in the championship standings.<\/p>\n

The 2.66-mile Talladega high banks, however, presents a level of confidence for the former champ. He won his very first NASCAR Cup Series start at the track in 2009. He\u2019s got 12 top-five showings \u2013 including three runner-up finishes \u2013 and has finished in the top-10 in half of his 32 starts, a remarkable statistic at a drafting track.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely not my best [season] start,\u2019\u2019 Keselowski allowed. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like my best start, but I\u2019ve got my eternal optimist glasses on and I see the potential. The potential for this team is higher than any team I\u2019ve had the last four or five years and we just have to recognize it. There\u2019s a lot of talent and a lot of fresh faces and the mistakes that come with that. We have to clean that up and recognize our potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

*CHAMPIONSHIP CREW CHIEF CHILDERS OUT AT SPIRE<\/b><\/p>\n

Spire Motorsports announced this week that it and veteran crew chief Rodney Childers had parted ways effective immediately.<\/p>\n

Childers, who guided Kevin Harvick to the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series championship, was in his first year with Spire after spending 11 years with the Stewart-Haas Racing team which left the series at the end of 2024. He has served as a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2005 and has 30 victories and nearly a 50 percent top-10 percentage, his cars scoring 299 top 10s in 685 combined starts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this is a shock, but also know that not everything works out perfect all the time,\u2019\u2019 Childers wrote on social media this week, thanking Spire Motorsports for his time there and wishing them \u201cthe best in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was just one of those things that just wasn\u2019t working for either of us.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The pairing with Haley at Spire Motorsports, however, was slow to start with only a single top-10 (10th at Homestead-Miami) through the opening nine races. Haley sits 23rd in the championship points standings. He finished 26th and 31st in the championship the previous two seasons. He qualified 37th for Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, just showing up and trying to do my job to the best of my ability each week and obviously it\u2019s an unexpected change and not something you ever want to do in the middle of the season, but super proud and thankful to be with a race team and owner like Jeff Dickerson who isn\u2019t scared to make some changes for maybe the better,\u2019\u2019 said Haley, who said he only found out about the situation after a day of regularly scheduled meetings last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a \u2018fit\u2019 thing, I think, nothing super wrong that stood out or super left or right. I think at the end of the day we\u2019re in the Cup Series and to compete on a Sunday in the Cup Series everything has to be perfect and if one little thing isn\u2019t perfect, you\u2019re not going to win races. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"

Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 Amazon Prime Video Chevrolet, looks on during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on April 26, 2025 in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

*LARSON LUCK ON SUPERSPEEDWAYS<\/b><\/p>\n

Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 Kyle Larson is widely regarded as one of the best race car drivers in the world \u2013 the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion wins in every sort of car he drives and is poised to make his second Indianapolis 500 start next month.<\/p>\n

The one missing style of trophy in the 32-year old\u2019s large trophy case, however, is a superspeedway-type victory. A 31-race winner, he is 0-for-20 on Talladega\u2019s high banks with a best showing of fourth last October. He is 0-for-22 at Daytona with no top-fives. His best showing is sixth there.<\/p>\n

Even bolstered with a pair of wins already this season, he says it doesn\u2019t necessarily change his approach for Sunday \u2013 doesn\u2019t mean he will race any more aggressively.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, it\u2019s nice to have a win before coming here, but it\u2019s kind of been that way for me since joining Hendrick (2021) we\u2019ve always had a win before going to Talladega,\u2019\u2019 Larson said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it would be like mentally if we didn\u2019t have a win. So yeah, I just believe in treating every weekend the same. It would be nice to get a win here but you don\u2019t put any more or any less emphasis on it than every weekend.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

*GIBBS RESURGENCE<\/b><\/p>\n

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Ty Gibbs is coming off his best showing of the 2025 season \u2013 a third-place finish at the Bristol Motor Speedway short track as he arrives at the series\u2019 biggest track, the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a significant uptick for Gibbs who has jumped from 34th place in the championship standings three races ago to 20th coming into Sunday\u2019s race at Talladega thanks to the Bristol result and a ninth place the preceding race at Darlington. It marks the first back-to-back string of top-10 finishes of the season for the 22-year old former NASCAR Xfinity Series champion and first since last summer when he scored a third place finish at Michigan and a fifth at Daytona.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, it shows a notable sign of improvement for his No. 54 JGR Toyota team which has a new crew chief this year in Tyler Allen and several new crew members.  He was the only Toyota driver to advance to the second round qualifying Saturday at Talladega and will roll off 10th in Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, I feel the results have shown for sure,\u2019\u2019 Gibbs said of the recent change in tide. \u201cBut there is not a time where I\u2019ve felt I was down on my team or was bummed out. I just think it\u2019s part of the process, we have a new team and I think our guys are really good and I have a lot of faith in our guys. There\u2019s a lot of things behind the scenes and everyone makes a judgement call, but I know I can run good and that our team is capable of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it takes time, and we\u2019ll get there. I have confidence in our team.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2013 Front Row Motorsports maintained its strong position out front at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with 24-year driver Zane Smith convincingly claiming the first pole position of his NASCAR Cup Series career \u2013 the third consecutive at the track for his team. Smith, the 2022 NASCAR Craftsman Truck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":51086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,208,783],"class_list":["post-51073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-talladega-superspeedway","tag-zane-smith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2212113076-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1836&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-dhL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073","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=51073"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51087,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51073\/revisions\/51087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}