Alex Bowman earned his seventh career pole and second consecutive at Bristol on Saturday. The Hendrick Motorsports (HMS) driver lapped the half-mile in 14.911s, beating Hyak Motorsports and fellow Chevrolet driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. by 0.014s. This is Stenhouse's first front row start since qualifying second at Auto Club Speedway two years ago.
"Yeah, it feels really good," said Bowman, who was the tenth driver to make a lap in qualifying. "Honestly, I'm just excited about a tire management race, but definitely want to dedicate this to Jon Edwards (HMS director of racing communications who passed away this week). Huge loss for everybody at HMS and for his family and everybody that was close to him. He was probably my favorite person at HMS. One of the good guys, for sure, and definitely gonna be missed a lot. So just proud of our 48 team and, yeah, excited for a tire management race. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Let's see what we've got."
