Reddick on Pole After Weather Forces Cancellation of Cup Qualifying

The NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Championship will begin with drivers having no laps in their cars before the green flag in Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Persistent lightning in the area kept cars parked on pit road on Saturday afternoon.

With the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Fleetio 200 scheduled for 7:30 PM ET, NASCAR eventually had to pull the plug on a potential qualifying and/or practice session for the NASCAR Cup Series field.

Due to the cancellation of Saturday's NASCAR Cup Series on-track activity, the starting lineup for Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway will be set by the rule book. Tyler Reddick, who won the opening three races of the NASCAR Cup Series season, will be the driver who has inherited the pole position for Sunday's race.

Reddick, who was still waiting for his car to clear technical inspection in the garage area as practice was about to begin before lightning halted the action, was pretty happy about the cancellation.

“Like best case scenario for us. Yeah, it's pretty sick,” Reddick quipped.

Reddick has track position, and he has the confidence in feeling that he'll have a great car off the trailer and knowing that the rest of the field won't have a practice session to tune their cars closer to his before the race.

“...it's literally best-case scenario for us," Reddick explained in a press conference when asked if he would have liked to turn a few laps in practice. "We were so strong here last spring. Ironically enough, as I kind of got going in Cup racing, it was during COVID, and there was no practice at all, and I kind of got very used to just having to figure it out the first corner. And so for me, in general, I feel within a really good spot most weekends when this happens, and we just have to unload and race, but beyond that, with as strong as we were, obviously, I think you can imagine teams wanting to try things and see if they close the gap, or what that all looks like, right? And no one really, no one had any kind of opportunity at all with that today. So, if anything, it just helps us even more."

The driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota, who suffered from a miserable summer stretch on track, will look to heat back up in the Chase from the pole position on Sunday at Darlington, a track where he won earlier this season, and has performed well at throughout his Cup Series career.

Daniel Suarez, who finished runner-up a week ago at Daytona International Speedway, will start from the runner-up spot Sunday evening at Darlington.

Ryan Preece, the driver who secured the No. 16 seed in the Chase with his first career victory last weekend, will start third, alongside Denny Hamlin, the No. 1 seed in the Chase, who will start fourth.

Michael McDowell, Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Austin Dillon, and Alex Bowman will round out the top-10 starters in Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.

Chase drivers who will start outside of the top-10 include Christopher Bell (11th), Joey Logano (13th), Bubba Wallace (17th), Chase Elliott (18th), William Byron (20th), Ryan Blaney (24th), Kyle Larson (25th), Ty Gibbs (28th), Carson Hocevar (34th), and Chris Buescher (35th).

Official Cook Out Southern 500 Starting Lineup

1. 45 - Tyler Reddick (Chase)
2. 7 - Daniel Suarez (Chase)
3. 60 - Ryan Preece (Chase)
4. 11 - Denny Hamlin (Chase)
5. 71 - Michael McDowell
6. 2 - Austin Cindric (Chase)
7. 19 - Chase Briscoe (Chase)
8. 47 - Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
9. 3 - Austin Dillon
10. 48 - Alex Bowman
11. 20 - Christopher Bell (Chase)
12. 6 - Brad Keselowski
13. 22 - Joey Logano (Chase)
14. 21 - Josh Berry
15. 35 - Riley Herbst
16. 41 - Cole Custer
17. 23 - Bubba Wallace (Chase)
18. 9 - Chase Elliott (Chase)
19. 42 - John Hunter Nemechek
20. 24 - William Byron (Chase)
21. 34 - Todd Gilliland
22. 67 - Corey Heim
23. 1 - Ross Chastain
24. 12 - Ryan Blaney (Chase)
25. 5 - Kyle Larson (Chase)
26. 97 - Shane van Gisbergen
27. 10 - Ty Dillon
28. 54 - Ty Gibbs (Chase)
29. 4 - Noah Gragson
30. 16 - AJ Allmendinger
31. 88 - Connor Zilisch
32. 33 - Austin Hill
33. 38 - Zane Smith
34. 77 - Carson Hocevar (Chase)
35. 17 - Chris Buescher (Chase)
36. 43 - Erik Jones
37. 51 - Cody Ware
38. 66 - Chad Finchum

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