KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Chase Elliott earned the Busch Pole Award and will lead the field to green Sunday for the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, the opening race in the third round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
Elliott, who won last weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL for the second year in a row, took the pole by virtue of NASCAR’s performance-based metric qualifying formula.
The NASCAR matrix factors in a driver’s lap speed ranking from the previous race, the last race finish for both driver and owner and the car’s current rank in the owner standings.
Lap speed is weighted at 15 percent, previous race finish at 25 percent for the driver and owner results and owner points position at 35 percent to calculate the final metric score.
Driver and owner playoff-eligible entries are ranked at the front of the field based on their metric scores from lowest to highest, with all non-playoff entries lined up behind the playoff cars in similar fashion.
Elliott earned the top spot with a metric score of 2.05, factoring in his ROVAL win, fastest lap from the event and fourth seed in the current point standings.
Joey Logano, the ROVAL runner-up, will join Elliott on the front row. Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. start third through fifth, respectively.
Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski round out the eight remaining playoff contenders in the first four rows of the starting grid.
Ryan Blaney rolls off best among the non-playoff drivers in ninth, with Kyle Busch – who was eliminated in the most recent round of the postseason – set to start 20th on Sunday.
To view the complete starting grid and performance matrix breakdown, click here.
Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 will take the green flag at 2:30 p.m. ET, with live coverage on NBC, the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.