DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Saturday night's Cup Series race at Daytona will feature an all-Front Row Motorsports Front Row, one led by Michael McDowell.
The driver of the No. 34 won the pole for Saturday's race with a lap of 183.165 mph. He was just ahead of teammate Todd Gilliland, who qualified second with a lap of 182.801 mph.
MORE: McDowell wins pole, full starting lineup
McDowell, a two-time Cup Series winner, started from the pole for the first time this season at Atlanta in February. He has since won the pole at Talladega and Gateway. Friday's qualifying session marked his fourth pole win of the season.
As McDowell told AltDriver after qualifying, the team set out ahead of the season to see if they could qualify well with a ton of extra effort. The results paid off with a front-row start in the Daytona 500. This proved to the team that they could contend for pole wins, so they continued putting extra effort into qualifying.
Joey Logano (182.341 mph), Ryan Preece (182.312 mph), Josh Berry (182.197 mph), Chase Briscoe (182.194 mph), William Byron (182.057 mph), Austin Cindric (181.998 mph), Kyle Larson (181.899 mph) and Chase Elliott (181.752 mph) all qualified inside the top 10.
No Toyota drivers made the second round of qualifying on Friday evening. Martin Truex Jr. was the best-qualifying Toyota driver with a lap of 181.170 mph. This put him on the ninth row next to Bubba Wallace.
Locking out the front row is significant for both Front Row Motorsports drivers considering that they each enter the weekend below the playoff cutline. Gilliland is 151 points behind the cutline while McDowell is 157 points behind.
Ross Chastain, who qualified 24th with a lap of 180.825 mph, is the first driver in the playoffs on points. He is one point above the cutline and one point ahead of Wallace.
Daytona has not been a track where Gilliland has achieved success in his career. He has five starts at the 2.5-mile track in Cup, but he has not finished any of them. His best finish was 23rd in the 2022 summer race at Daytona.
McDowell, for comparison, has 26 starts at Daytona at NASCAR's top level. He won the 2021 Daytona 500. He has three top-five finishes and eight top-10s at the track, primarily with Front Row Motorsports.