Facing a must-win situation, William Byron earned a critical pole position at Martinsville Speedway. The Hendrick Motorsports driver lapped the half-mile short track in 19.286s, beating Ty Gibbs by just fractions — 0.002s — for pole.
This is Byron’s 16th career pole and his third of the 2025 season, but the two-time Martinsville winner has never started on the front row for this race.
“It’s great, but it’s not the race though,” said Byron. “So, we got a lot of work to do tomorrow. It felt good in practice. It felt decent there in qualifying. It’s just so cold. It took a while for the tires to kind of come in. It feels nice — first pole at Martinsville. We usually struggle to qualify well here. Just excited for tomorrow. It’s a big challenge, and that’s what counts. After 500 laps, we’ll see how we are.”
On what he expects for the race on Sunday, Byron added: “It’s going to be similar conditions to what it is right now. It’s going to be chilly. The track is going to change a bunch. We got to do a good job of communicating, talking through it and making the right adjustments.”
Kyle Larson, who currently holds the fourth and final transfer spot, qualified third. Joey Logano was fourth, and Denny Hamlin fifth.
Cole Custer, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe, and Austin Cindric filled out the remainder of the top ten.
Christopher Bell qualified 12th, but he wasn’t the worst of the eight playoff drivers. Surprisingly, Ryan Blaney will start very deep in the field in 31st. The Team Penske driver has won the last two fall races at Martinsville.
There were no incidents during the session, and all 37 entries put down a qualifying time.
Q
All Stats
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
– The Motorsport.com Team
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
