RICHMOND, Va. – It will be an all-Hendrick Motorsports front row for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway. Kyle Larson earned the pole position, while Chase Elliott will start second. Alex Bowman qualified fourth, making it three cars in the first two rows.
Larson's lap of 120.332 mph in the final round of qualifying put the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 driver in the top starting spot. The pole is the first for Larson this season, the second of his career at Richmond and the 17th of his Cup Series career. The pole also puts Hendrick Motorsports just two away from 250 pole positions in the Cup Series. In addition, the 31-year-old driver topped the speed chart in group practice with a time of 121.836 mph and placed second in the 15- and 20-consecutive lap averages.
PHOTOS: Scenes from Larson's first pole position of 2024
Larson is the defending race winner and has two victories at Richmond. In 18 starts at the Virginia track, he has four top-five finishes and eight top-10s. This is Larson's third top-five starting position of the season.
"The number one pit stall here means a lot," Larson told FOX Sports 1's Regan Smith after earning the pole position. "Chase (Elliott) got close there, so I was a bit nervous. Awesome day for Hendrick Motorsports, HendrickCars.com, Chevrolet and everybody involved. It's good to get another pole. We'll see if it translates to tomorrow's race."
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Elliott will line up second in the No. 9 UniFirst Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 after a lap of 120.321 mph, just 0.002 seconds off his teammate for the pole position. This is the 2020 Cup Series champion's best starting spot of the season and his fourth consecutive top-10 position to start a race. In 15 starts at Richmond, the 28-year-old driver has five top-five finishes (including a runner-up result in April of 2018, where he also started second) and six top-10s. Bowman's starting spot of fourth in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 is his best of the season. The 30-year-old driver posted a lap of 119.681 mph in the final round of qualifying. He enters this race with two straight fourth-place finishes in the season and his three top-fives are tied with three others for the most in the series. In practice, Bowman was a standout car on the long run, placing first in the 15-, 20- and 25-lap consecutive averages. He was also second on the 10- and 30-lap averages. In 15 Richmond starts, he has one win (April of 2021) and four top-10 finishes, including three straight in the spring race.
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William Byron will start 13th in the No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The 26-year-old driver was the first to have multiple wins for the third consecutive season – the first to accomplish that since team vice chairman Jeff Gordon did it from 1997 to 1999. In 11 starts at Richmond, Byron has one top-five finish and two top-10s. In the last two spring races, he has led laps – the second-most he has led at any track in his Cup career.
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"We've got momentum, for sure," Byron said a week removed from his win at Circuit of The Americas. "Trying to stack the weeks together is the big thing. We don't want to have one good week, one bad week and one good. So we just want to kind of be boring; be mellow and have solid runs when we don't win."
Hendrick Motorsports has tallied 12 wins at Richmond. Jimmie Johnson and Terry Labonte lead the way with three victories, followed by Gordon with two. Bowman, Larson, Joe Nemechek and Tim Richmond each have one win at the 0.75-mile track. The seven drivers to win in Virginia's capital city are the most by a single organization. In addition, the organization has a series-best 57 points-paying victories on short tracks.
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Team owner Rick Hendrick grew up in Palmer Springs, Virginia, and his teams have won 40 Cup Series races in his home state. Hendrick Motorsports has gone to victory lane in Virginia at least one time in 28 different seasons, including each of the past four full seasons. The most recent 13 races in Virginia have seen one of his cars emerge victorious on six occasions, with all four active drivers winning.
Catch the 400-lap race on Easter Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Hendrick Motorsports' five night race wins in the Next Gen car are the most by all teams.
