Practice speed nets Dale Earnhardt Jr. the pole at Daytona
A Saturday afternoon thunderstorm in the vicinity of Daytona Beach meant Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start first in Sunday’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
Qualifying ended up being cancelled and the grid was set by the speeds in Friday’s first practice session. Junior was fastest. So he’s got the pole.
He’s joined on the front row by Austin Dillon, who won the pole for the 2014 Daytona 500. The rest of the top five is comprised of Clint Bowyer, Paul Menard and Trevor Bayne.
The session was set to be the first time NASCAR used its new single-car qualifying format at Daytona. After pole qualifying for the 2015 Daytona 500 included drafting and crashes, NASCAR tweaked the qualifying format.
Cars are released one-by-one from pit road at an interval that doesn’t allow them to draft. Each qualifier gets one full lap to post a speed. The top 12 cars then repeat the process for a second round and the fastest car in that round gets the pole.
Michael McDowell and Ryan Blaney will miss Sunday’s race. Both drivers are running part-time schedules and were at the bottom of the qualifying cancellation hierarchy because of their limited number of race attempts.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
