Martin Truex Jr’s. seventh-place qualifying performance Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway was his personal best in 22 career Sprint Cup attempts at the half-mile short track. His previous qualifying best at Bristol was eighth set in this year’s spring race and also in the 2011 spring race.
Truex will start on the inside of Row 4 for Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops 500 NRA Night Race. It will be his 15th top-10 starting position of the season.
Driving the No. 78 Bass Pro Shops/NRA Museum Toyota for Furniture Row Racing, Truex was 12th fastest in the first session (14.858 seconds at 129.143 mph), third in the second (14.732 at 130.247) before bringing home the seventh top speed of 14.812 at 129.544 in the 12-driver pole-shootout round.
The pole winner was Carl Edwards (14.602 at 131.407). Rounding out the top-12 were: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Ryan Blaney, Matt Kenseth, Chase Elliott, Truex, AJ Allmendinger, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Jeff Gordon and Chris Buescher.
Saturday night’s race will be televised on the NBC Sports Network, starting at 6 p.m. MT (8 ET).
