Bell earns pole for Kansas race

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Christopher Bell will start in pole position for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Kansas Speedway, putting himself in good position to wiggle off the playoff bubble and make next weekend’s cutoff a little less stressful.

Bell was the only driver among the 10 in the final round of qualifying to go faster than 180 mph, turning a lap of 180.276 in his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota for a comfortable margin over Kyle Larson, who locked up his place in the next round of the playoffs by winning the Southern 500 in his Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 Chevrolet last weekend at South Carolina’s Darlington Raceway.

“That was a lot of fun,” said Bell, who rode the preferred high line along the wall at Kansas to his second straight pole and fourth of the season. “Qualifying here is very intense. That’s certainly all we had.”

Bell followed his pole run at Darlington with a mistake during the race and finished 23rd. That left him just one point ahead of Bubba Wallace for 12th place in points with next Saturday’s race at Tennessee’s Bristol Motor Speedway the cutoff for the top 12 drivers to advance. The 10-race postseason started with 16 championship contenders.

Larson, who finished second to JGR driver Denny Hamlin in the spring race at Kansas, will start alongside Bell on the front row. Fellow playoff contender Martin Truex Jr. of JGR qualified third, with Hendrick driver Chase Elliott, who did not make the playoffs, fourth and Tyler Reddick fifth in a 23XI Racing Toyota.

“You want to build on good finishes, and we haven’t had two in a row for a long time,” Larson said. “So that’s kind of my goal going into really the whole playoffs, is just to be consistently up front and finishing right.”