BRISTOL, Tenn. – Chase Elliott earned the top starting spot for Hendrick Motorsports, which placed three drivers in the top 10 of the starting lineup for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Elliott will line up fifth (122.882 mph/15.615 seconds) in the No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, his second top-five starting spot in as many weeks. In 13 starts at Bristol, Elliott has four top-five finishes, seven top-10s and 439 laps led. His best finish came in the 2022 playoff race when the Dawsonville, Georgia, native finished second. The 2020 Cup Series champion won the All-Star Race that same year on the lone occasion it was run at the 0.533-mile track. The 28-year-old driver has one short-track win at Martinsville Speedway in his title season.
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William Byron is set to take the green flag from eighth position in the No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The 26-year-old driver has three straight top-10 finishes at Bristol (tied for the longest streak among active drivers) and two top-fives with four top-10s in nine career Cup starts here. His best finishes are a pair of third-place runs in 2021 and 2022. Byron has one short-track win, which came at Martinsville in 2022.
Byron was the fastest Hendrick Motorsports car in practice, placing sixth on the speed chart. The 26-year-old driver was also the fifth-best on the 10-lap consecutive board and the fourth-best on the 15-lap board. Group A had a distinct advantage in speed in the group practices and Byron was the only driver from the team in that session. The track applied resin to the surface ahead of Saturday's on-track activity.
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Kyle Larson will start 10th in the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The 31-year-old driver came up the track during his final round qualifying lap and that caused him to lose all his momentum on the run. Larson has one win in 15 starts at Bristol, five top-five finishes, 10 top-10s and 870 laps led. Since coming to Hendrick Motorsports for the 2021 season, he has never finished outside the top five and he is the only driver to finish in the top five in the last three races here. The 2021 Cup Series champion has four short-track points-paying wins– two at Richmond Raceway (2017 and 2023), Bristol (2021) and Martinsville (2023).
Alex Bowman will take the grid from the 29th position in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. In 13 starts at Bristol, the 30-year-old driver has two top-five finishes – a pair of fifth-place runs – and three top-10s. Bowman has two short-track wins at Hendrick Motorsports, with victories at Richmond and Martinsville in 2021.
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Ryan Blaney earned the pole position for Sunday's 500-lap race. This is the first spring race on the concrete surface since 2020.
Coming into Sunday's race, Hendrick Motorsports is three laps away from 80,000 circuits out front in the sport's top series. To date, the organization's 79,997 laps led have come across 35 different tracks with 29 drivers. With 6,404 laps led at Bristol, the track ranks third on the team's all-time laps led list.
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The organization has 12 wins at "The Last Great Colosseum." Jeff Gordon (five wins) and Jimmie Johnson (two wins) are the only drivers in team history to win multiple times at the venue. Larson, Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, Terry Labonte and Darrell Waltrip each have one triumph for the team.
The last time the Cup Series visited the concrete layout of Bristol was in September of 2023. After starting last, Larson led 20 laps en route to a runner-up finish, while Elliott (seventh) and Byron (ninth) each earned top-10 results. All four of the team's drivers were in the top nine in average running position for the race: Byron (fifth at 7.33), Larson (seventh at 8.27), Elliott (eighth at 10.34) and Bowman (ninth at 11.23).
You can catch all 500 laps of the Bristol spring race on Sunday, March 17, starting at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).