NASCAR: William Byron Bests Jordan Taylor, Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button at COTA - Full Qualifying Results

Full results from qualifying at Circuit of The Americas where William Byron earned pole position for the race.

William Byron earned his 9th career pole today at Circuit of The Americas, topping a talented field of drivers in qualifying. Byron turned a lap of 93.882 mph around the 3.41-mile road course in Austin, Texas. He will be joined on the front row by Tyler Reddick, who was the fastest driver in the first round but wasn’t able to duplicate his success in the final round.

“We made big improvements with the car overnight,” Byron said. “I thought that practice helped us to get a little bit better and get the back of the car settled down. It’s really fun to get the first pole of the year. Obviously, we’ve been on a good stretch here of late. Tomorrow is what pays, so we’ve just got to be there at the end.”

Row 2 features two very talented road course drivers in Austin Cindric and Jordan Taylor. Subbing for the injured Chase Elliott, Taylor was brilliant in his first NASCAR outing. The IMSA champion was second-fastest in the first round of qualifying, and will start his first race from the 4th position tomorrow. Taylor’s run was the best qualifying performance by a driver in their first Cup start since Boris Said qualified on the front row at Watkins Glen in 1999.

Daniel Suarez and Alex Bowman will start from Row 3 while AJ Allmendinger and Erik Jones share Row 4. Kyle Busch and Noah Gragson rounded out the ten drivers that advanced to the final round of qualifying. It was a strong showing by Legacy Motor Club’s two full-time drivers, while Chevrolet took eight of the top ten spots, including pole position.

Bubba Wallace and defending race winner Ross Chastain just missed out on advancing and will start from Row 6 tomorrow. Kyle Larson (13th), Christopher Bell (14th), and Ty Gibbs (17th) will all have some ground to make up tomorrow but should be in the mix for the race win.

Formula One World Champions Kimi Raikkonen (22nd) and Jenson Button (24th) had decent qualifying performances and will start near each other on Sunday. Both have raced on this circuit many times in F1, with Raikkonen winning the 2018 race with Ferrari.

Previous COTA winners

2022: Ross Chastain

2021: Chase Elliott