Bell wins third straight NASCAR Cup Series pole at Kansas Speedway

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Christopher Bell won the pole on Saturday for the third straight NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway, giving him the best possible starting position as he tries to advance through the second round of the playoffs.

Bell turned a blistering, balanced lap of 179.336 mph in the pole shootout. That put him on the front row for Sunday's race with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs, who was eliminated from the postseason a week ago.

“We showed up with probably the best Kansas car we've ever had,” said Bell, who has finished in the top 10 in the past two races at Kansas but never has turned one of those brilliant starting positions into a win.

“It's always been a great track for us to qualify at and when we race we're in that third to seventh range,” Bell said, “but today was different. It was really good in practice. I was able to drive the car. And we were able to replicate it in qualifying.”

Tyler Reddick, the defending Kansas playoff race winner, will start third alongside Kyle Busch, the only other non-playoff driver to advance through the first round of qualifying. Reddick held off Denny Hamlin to win in overtime last fall.

“Practice was a little bit of a struggle for us, but I thought we made some good adjustments,” Reddick said. “We were going to have to go quite a ways to get the pace we needed to out of qualifying ... but I'll definitely take it.”

The rest of the top 10 consisted of drivers who are starting the round of 12 still alive in the playoffs. William Byron was fifth with Hamlin, whose four wins at Kansas are the most of any driver, starting sixth. Daniel Suarez, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe — whose wife, Marissa, is back home as the couple expects to welcome twins any day — round out the top 10.

Kyle Larson, who dominated last week's race at Bristol, was the fastest that failed to make the second round of qualify and will start 11th, alongside fellow playoff driver Alex Bowman. Austin Cindric qualified 17th on a hot, sunny day at Kansas.

Chase Elliott will have the most work to do. He had engine trouble in practice, radioing to his team at one point that he thought he dropped a cylinder. He went ahead and qualified, but the team will switch engines and he will start from the back Sunday.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing