Christopher Bell Bests Hendrick Trio for Martinsville Pole Position

Lesley Ann Miller, LAT Images for Toyota GAZOO Racing

It's been a tough couple of weeks for Christopher Bell, who won three races in a row earlier this season. But after a two-race winless drought, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver will look to collect his second career Martinsville Clock from the pole position in Sunday's Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

"I think it just goes to show whenever we do it right, we're certainly as capable as anyone," Bell said of capturing the pole after a rough two-race stretch. "And I think there's probably upwards of five teams that can say the same thing."

Bell took the pole position for Sunday's race after cranking out a lap time of 19.718 seconds (96.034 mph) in Saturday's qualifying session, which was enough to top Chase Elliott by a slim margin of 0.017 seconds.

STARTING LINEUP: NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out 400 at Martinsville

For the 30-year-old Bell, the pole at Martinsville is the 14th pole of his NASCAR Cup Series career, and it comes in his 187th start. Now, the driver will look to pick up his fourth win of the 2025 season, and while he knows a lot can happen over 400 laps at Martinsville, Bell knows starting up front will make the opening Stage of the race quite a bit easier for him.

"[starting up front] really rewards the ability to save your tires and not push your car as hard – really the whole run, but especially at the beginning of the run," Bell explained, "where if you qualify in the teens and twenties – which I have done a lot in my Martinsville career – you are just in a dog fight for every position because you run the threat of going a lap down at the end of a run, and everyone is just scratching and clawing to out brake everybody, and you penalize the tires at the beginning of the run. I think those first five to 10 qualifiers, are just content and know that they are going to go 80 laps on tires, and they are like we are going to sort it out, get in lines - I think it pays dividends at the end of those runs.”

While Bell was second-fastest in practice earlier in the day, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver wasn't super confident in his chances to take the pole position due to his slot in the qualifying order.

"Just from the qualifying order, I felt like I didn't go out late enough to have a shot at it."

Whenever Bell started seeing decent lap times clicking up on some cars that attacked the track in front of him, his confidence began to trend upward, but he still thought the track would get increasingly faster as the session went.

He was pleasantly surprised that his lap time held up, and he took home his first pole position of the 2025 season.

Not only did Bell come out ahead of Elliott, a Hendrick Motorsports driver, for the pole position, but his pole-winning run snuffed out a Hendrick Motorsports 1-2-3 sweep in qualifying as Elliott's teammates Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson recorded the third and fourth-fastest lap times in the session.

Denny Hamlin, Bell's teammate, will roll from the starting grid in the fifth position on Sunday in his No. 11 Progressive Toyota Camry XSE.

Chris Buescher, Joey Logano, Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick, and defending Cook Out 400 race winner William Byron rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Sunday's race.

Justin Haley, who suffered a strange incident in practice earlier in the afternoon when his hood flew up while turning laps in his No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, turned in the 30th-fastest qualifying lap.

A week after his first top-10 finish of the 2025 season, a 30th-place starting spot isn't what Haley imagined heading into the weekend, but the fact that his car wasn't damaged worse than it was in practice, which allowed him to participate in the quaifying session had to be considered a win for the driver and his team.

Casey Mears is making his first NASCAR Cup Series start since the 2019 season, and he'll start from the 37th position in the 38-car field. Mears turned a lap time of 20.583 seconds in his No. 66 Garage 66 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.

Burt Myers, who was a surprise entrant in the preseason exhibition event at Bowman Gray Stadium, will start his first career NASCAR Cup Series point race from the final starting spot in the field (38th). Myers is driving the No. 50 Chevrolet for the "Open" entry Team AmeriVet organization.

Note: This story will be updated with quotes from the pole winner, and additional details following Saturday's qualifying session.