Jeff Gordon put his No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet on the pole for the Bank of America 500, the fifth race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. It is the four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) champion’s eighth pole at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Gordon has now won 69 career pole and is in a tie with Cale Yarborough for third on the all-time poles list.
Mark Martin, No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet, will roll off fourth in the 43-car field.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr., No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet, with start eighth and four-time defending NSCS champion Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, will start from the 10th position.
“It was a huge shock,” said Gordon, who is fourth in the Cup standings, 85 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson. “We just have not been qualifying good this year, and we haven’t qualified this well at Charlotte for 10 years. I felt like there was a time when we were almost like the pole kings—like Ryan Newman lately, when he comes to Charlotte.
“We used to qualify so well here, but competition and cars and different things changing over the years, we just sort of lost our way here, and I’ll be honest, [Thursday], the way it was going, I didn’t think we had any shot at this pole.” NASCAR.com
Other Team Chevy drivers in the Chase will start as follows: Jeff Burton-18th; Clint Bowyer-20th; Kevin Harvick-24th and Tony Stewart-29th.
Carl Edwards (Ford), A.J. Allmendinger (Ford) and Paul Menard (Ford) complete the top-five qualifiers.
POS CAR DRIVER MAKE 1 24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 2 99 Carl Edwards Ford 3 43 A.J. Allmendinger Ford 4 5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 5 98 Paul Menard Ford 6 18 Kyle Busch Toyota 7 83 Reed Sorenson Toyota 8 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 9 19 Elliott Sadler Ford 10 48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 11 39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 12 20 Joey Logano Toyota 13 56 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 14 47 Marcos Ambrose Toyota 15 2 Kurt Busch Dodge 16 0 David Reutimann Toyota 17 17 Matt Kenseth Ford 18 31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 19 77 Sam Hornish Jr. Dodge 20 33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 21 82 Scott Speed Toyota 22 16 Greg Biffle Ford 23 11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 24 29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 25 9 Kasey Kahne Ford 26 6 David Ragan Ford 27 1 Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 28 9 Landon Cassill Chevrolet 29 14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 30 110 Bobby Labonte Chevrolet 31 12 Brad Keselowski Dodge 32 78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 33 46 Michael McDowell Chevrolet 34 42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 35 26 Patrick Carpentier Ford 36 38 David Gilliland Ford 37 21 Bill Elliott Ford 38 71 Andy Lally Chevrolet 39 7 Robby Gordon Toyota 40 36 J.J. Yeley Chevrolet 41 37 Dave Blaney+ Ford 42 34 Travis Kvapil+ Ford 43 164 Jeff Green Toyota
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