Zane Smith captures first-career pole for Talladega Cup race

Miami Herald

02-05-2025

TALLADEGA, Ala. _ Front Row Motorsports maintained its strong position out front at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with 24-year driver Zane Smith convincingly claiming the first pole position of his NASCAR Cup Series career -- the third consecutive at the track for his team.
Smith, the 2022 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday's Jack Link's 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the sport's biggest track with two-time series champion Kyle Busch starting alongside Smith on the front row -- his best start since earning pole position at Dover, Del. last Spring.
Smith earned his first pole position with a lap of 182.174 mph in the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford -- bettering Busch's time by a slight .132-second on the 2.66-mile circuit.
'Obviously a lot of speed,' said Smith, who was fastest in opening-round time trials and improved that time in the final round. 'Just really proud of how our whole team has been working together before our one-week break (last week) and I feel like that one-week break was perfect not to reset but to digest and think about what we need to re-build on.
'And now we're off to a good start for this next long stretch. Proud of the speed and everything we've been doing, just need to execute a little bit better but a ton of speed this weekend. Long race tomorrow and a lot of things are going to happen and go on, but obviously we have the speed to do it. We'll see how it goes.'
Seven Fords, a pair of Chevrolets and a single Toyota advanced to that 10-car final round.
Reigning series champion, Team Penske's Joey Logano and Roush Fenway Keselowski's Ryan Preece will start from row two.
Richard Childress Racing's Austin Dillon, RFK's Chris Buescher, Penske's Austin Cindric, Wood Brothers's Josh Berry, Penske's Ryan Blaney and Joe Gibbs Racing's Ty Gibbs (the only Toyota) rounded out the second round qualifiers.
Defending race winner Tyler Reddick will roll off 26th in the 23XI Racing No. 45 Toyota. Championship points leader, Hendrick Motorsports' William Byron, will start 16th on the 39-car grid.
KESELOWSKI'S OPPORTUNITY
Brad Keselowski is a former NASCAR Cup Series champion -- claiming the title in 2012 in only his 16th full-time year competing in the series -- and leads all drivers with six Talladega Superspeedway trophies. That's all encouraging, but the 41-year old owner-driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford would really like to resume that big track magic this weekend and jumpstart an uncharacteristically 'off' start to the 2025 season.
Keselowski is still racing for his first top-10 of the year -- an 11th place showing at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway is his best result and he sits an uncharacteristic 31st in the championship standings.
The 2.66-mile Talladega high banks, however, presents a level of confidence for the former champ. He won his very first NASCAR Cup Series start at the track in 2009. He's got 12 top-five showings -- including three runner-up finishes -- and has finished in the top-10 in half of his 32 starts, a remarkable statistic at a drafting track.
'It's definitely not my best (season) start,' Keselowski allowed. 'It doesn't feel like my best start, but I've got my eternal optimist glasses on and I see the potential. The potential for this team is higher than any team I've had the last four or five years and we just have to recognize it. There's a lot of talent and a lot of fresh faces and the mistakes that come with that. We have to clean that up and recognize our potential.'
CHAMPIONSHIP CREW CHIEF CHILDERS OUT AT SPIRE
Spire Motorsports announced this week that it and veteran crew chief Rodney Childers had parted ways effective immediately.
Childers, who guided Kevin Harvick to the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series championship, was in his first year with Spire after spending 11 years with the Stewart-Haas Racing team which left the series at the end of 2024. He has served as a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2005 and has 30 victories and nearly a 50 percent top-10 percentage, his cars scoring 299 top 10s in 685 combined starts.
'I know this is a shock, but also know that not everything works out perfect all the time,' Childers wrote on social media this week, thanking Spire Motorsports for his time there and wishing them 'the best in the future.'
'This was just one of those things that just wasn't working for either of us.'
The pairing with Haley at Spire Motorsports, however, was slow to start with only a single top-10 (10th at Homestead-Miami) through the opening nine races. Haley sits 23rd in the championship points standings. He finished 26th and 31st in the championship the previous two seasons. He qualified 37th for Sunday's race.
'For me, just showing up and trying to do my job to the best of my ability each week and obviously it's an unexpected change and not something you ever want to do in the middle of the season, but super proud and thankful to be with a race team and owner like Jeff Dickerson who isn't scared to make some changes for maybe the better,' said Haley, who said he only found out about the situation after a day of regularly scheduled meetings last Tuesday.
'It was just a 'fit' thing, I think, nothing super wrong that stood out or super left or right. I think at the end of the day we're in the Cup Series and to compete on a Sunday in the Cup Series everything has to be perfect and if one little thing isn't perfect, you're not going to win races. And that's what we're trying to do.'
LARSON LUCK ON SUPERSPEEDWAYS
Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson is widely regarded as one of the best race car drivers in the world -- the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion wins in every sort of car he drives and is poised to make his second Indianapolis 500 start next month.
The one missing style of trophy in the 32-year old's large trophy case, however, is a superspeedway-type victory. A 31-race winner, he is 0-for-20 on Talladega's high banks with a best showing of fourth last October. He is 0-for-22 at Daytona with no top-fives. His best showing is sixth there.
Even bolstered with a pair of wins already this season, he says it doesn't necessarily change his approach for Sunday -- doesn't mean he will race any more aggressively.
'Sure, it's nice to have a win before coming here, but it's kind of been that way for me since joining Hendrick (2021) we've always had a win before going to Talladega,' Larson said. 'I don't know what it would be like mentally if we didn't have a win. So yeah, I just believe in treating every weekend the same. It would be nice to get a win here but you don't put any more or any less emphasis on it than every weekend.'
GIBBS RESURGENCE
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Ty Gibbs is coming off his best showing of the 2025 season -- a third-place finish at the Bristol Motor Speedway short track as he arrives at the series' biggest track, the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.
It's a significant uptick for Gibbs who has jumped from 34th place in the championship standings three races ago to 20th coming into Sunday's race at Talladega thanks to the Bristol result and a ninth place the preceding race at Darlington. It marks the first back-to-back string of top-10 finishes of the season for the 22-year old former NASCAR Xfinity Series champion and first since last summer when he scored a third place finish at Michigan and a fifth at Daytona.
Most importantly, it shows a notable sign of improvement for his No. 54 JGR Toyota team which has a new crew chief this year in Tyler Allen and several new crew members. He was the only Toyota driver to advance to the second round qualifying Saturday at Talladega and will roll off 10th in Sunday's race.
'For us, I feel the results have shown for sure,' Gibbs said of the recent change in tide. 'But there is not a time where I've felt I was down on my team or was bummed out. I just think it's part of the process, we have a new team and I think our guys are really good and I have a lot of faith in our guys. There's a lot of things behind the scenes and everyone makes a judgement call, but I know I can run good and that our team is capable of that.
'Sometimes it takes time, and we'll get there. I have confidence in our team.'
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