LINCOLN, Ala. -- Zane Smith will lead the field to the green flag for the Jack Link's 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
The Front Row Motorsports driver won the pole for the first time in his Cup Series career with a lap of 52.565 seconds. His previous best starting position for a Cup Series race was seventh at Atlanta Motor Speedway earlier this season.
This continues a trend from last season when Front Row Motorsports swept the pole wins at Talladega with Michael McDowell. The team also won the pole for both Atlanta races and the Daytona summer race last season.
MORE: Jack Link's 500 starting lineup
Kyle Busch qualified second with a lap of 52.697 seconds. He led a top five also featuring Joey Logano (52.700), Ryan Preece (52.700), and Austin Dillon (52.736).
The rest of the top 10 included Chris Buescher (52.761), Austin Cindric (52.780), Josh Berry (52.795), Ryan Blaney (52.795), and Ty Gibbs (52.951).
Tyler Reddick, the winner of last season's spring race, qualified 26th with a lap of 53.222 seconds.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the winner of last season's playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, qualified 35th with a lap of 53.534 seconds. This marks the second consecutive time that he has started outside the top 30 at the 2.66-mile track.
That being said, Stenhouse has shown the ability to win at Daytona and Talladega while starting 31st or worse in the Gen 7 era.
"In the Next Gen cars, since we have been coming to the superspeedways, we have put every kind of different setup that we could to try and qualify better," Stenhouse said in response to a question from AltDriver.
"We feel like we do have a really good race package, so we don't want to jeopardize that, especially at Daytona and Atlanta, where I feel handling matters a little bit more than Talladega.
"We have tried to get a little more aggressive in qualifying here at Talladega, but just can't seem to find something that works for speed for us."