Busch, who earned the win last Sunday when he was ahead of Ryan Blaney when the caution came out in the final lap of overtime, received the top starting position this week when rain washed out qualifying Saturday at Dover.
NASCAR was able to get in most of practice on Saturday morning before a heavy mist set in and forced the cancellation of qualifying.
With the lineup set by NASCAR’s performance metric, Busch landed the pole with Christopher Bell lining up alongside him on the front row for Sunday’s 400-lap race.
“Certainly, we didn’t come great off the truck but we felt all the ideas were there,” said Busch, who struggled in the practice session. “Conceptually, everything looked right. Looking at a lot of our other comparisons available to us, they looked good.
“It just didn’t show up on the race track. The first couple of laps, the short-run speed definitely wasn’t there. The later laps looked a lot more similar to the rest of the cars. Guys are working hard to get where we want for the race.
“I’ll take it. Starting up front, track position race, No. 1 pit box – that’s super-good to have here at Dover.”
Rain remains in the forecast on Sunday as well, with a 90-percent chance of heavy rain or thunderstorms much of the day. The start time has already been moved up an hour to 1 p.m. ET to try to get the race completed.
Blaney will line up third, Brad Keselowski – who was fastest in practice – will line up fourth and Chris Buescher fifth.
Completing the top-10 are Chase Briscoe, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Chase Elliott.
Josh Berry, in his first week substituting for the injured Alex Bowman in Hendrick’s No. 48 Chevrolet, is slated to start 14th.
Austin Dillon, who wrecked in practice and had to move to a backup car, will have to start Sunday’s race from the rear of the field.
