Stenhouse captures Daytona 500 pole

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. needed just two days to get his new team to the top.

Stenhouse won the pole Sunday for the season-opening Daytona 500 next weekend, putting JTG-Daugherty Racing in the NASCAR spotlight for a week. Stenhouse’s third pole in 257 Cup Series starts and first at Daytona International Speedway came on his second day in the new Chevrolet Camaro.

His first day behind the wheel came during practice Saturday.

“It’s the best driving Camaro I’ve ever driven,” Stenhouse quipped.

Stenhouse turned a fast lap at 194.582 mph to claim the pole, edging Alex Bowman for the top spot. Bowman reached 194.363 mph around the 21⁄2-mile superspeedway to lock down a front-row spot for the third consecutive year. Bowman finished 17th and 11th, respectively, in the last two openers.

“As a race car driver, there’s not much you can do to make them go faster,” Bowman said. “But you can sure screw them up, so at least I didn’t do that.”

Only the top two spots were determined in singlecar qualifying. The starting order for the rest of the 40-car field will be set by a pair of qualifying races Thursday at Daytona.

Even so, the Hendrick Motorsports entries clearly have speed: Stenhouse’s engines are built by Hendrick, and Hendrick drivers Bowman, Chase Elliott and Jimmie Johnson were second through fourth on the speed chart.

Defending race winner Denny Hamlin was fifth fastest.

Winning the pole means little, if anything, at NASCAR’s premier race. No pole winner has gone on to win “the Great American Race” since Hall of Famer Dale Jarrett in 2000.

But for Stenhouse, the accomplishment meant everything.

He was surprisingly dumped by Roush Fenway Racing in October, long after the two-time Xfinity Series champion thought he was good for another year with the only NASCAR team for which he’s driven.