Alex Bowman wins pole for Daytona 500 ahead of Kyle Larson

It’s another Hendrick Motorsports Daytona 500 front-row lockout.

Alex Bowman won the pole for Sunday’s first race of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season Wednesday and posted a lap more than nine-tenths of a second faster than teammate Kyle Larson in the second round of qualifying.

It’s Bowman’s sixth consecutive front-row start in the Daytona 500. Hendrick Motorsports is the best team ever at qualifying for the 500, and Bowman shows that off really well. It’s his third pole position for the 500 after he started first in 2018 and 2021; three of his four career poles have come ahead of the 500.

Hendrick Motorsports has won 16 pole positions for the 500.

"I don't have a lot to do with qualifying here," Bowman said. "Just fortunate to qualify some really fast race cars."

The 36 cars with charters came into qualifying locked into the 500. With 42 cars entered into the race, six cars were competing for the final four spots in the 40-car field. The fastest two cars of those six Wednesday qualified for Sunday’s race, and Jimmie Johnson and Travis Pastrana posted the two fastest speeds of the six open cars.

That means Zane Smith and Chandler Smith will compete in the first Duel race for a spot in the 500, while Austin Hill and Conor Daly will race each other for the other spot in the race.

A Hendrick driver hasn't won the 500 since 2014

While Hendrick has been phenomenal at putting cars on the front row at Daytona in recent years, its drivers haven't been getting to victory lane. The last Hendrick Motorsports driver to win the Daytona 500 was Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2014. Just one Chevy driver has won the 500 since Junior won nine years ago.

Figuring out how to get one of its drivers into victory lane is the big task for Hendrick for the next four days. It boasts two of the past three Cup Series champions in Chase Elliott and Larson, as well as drivers such as Bowman and William Byron, who are perennially in the playoffs.

But winning the Daytona 500 has become a lot about simply being at the front for the final restart. The 500 has been dominated by short runs to the finish in the past decade.

NASCAR’s bizarre Daytona 500 schedule

Wednesday night’s qualifying session was the first time Cup Series cars were on track at Daytona. NASCAR made the peculiar choice to not stage a practice session ahead of qualifying for the first time, and that showed right away as Chandler Smith’s car struggled to get firing. A practice session would have fixed that gremlin.

There’s no practice ahead of Thursday's Duel races either, meaning most drivers will have run one lap at speed before racing 60 laps in their Duel race Thursday.

NASCAR has cut down on practice time in recent seasons to cut costs for teams. But there sure seems to be a happy medium that can be found ahead of the Daytona 500. Practice can help build up anticipation for an event. And we’ll be blunt: Wednesday pole qualifying without any practice ahead of it feels like a formality and nothing more.

Sure, qualifying on the front row for the Daytona 500 might be largely insignificant given the vagaries of a race at Daytona. But it used to be a really big deal. It’s no longer a big deal. And that’s a shame.