Daytona winner Ryan Blaney will start first at Darlington
Ryan Blaney is starting where he's finished the last two Cup Series races.
Blaney has the pole for Sunday's race at Darlington (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN) after winning the final race of the regular season at Daytona. Blaney is one of the 16 drivers in the playoffs and starts on the front row with Denny Hamlin.
Since NASCAR's qualifying formula includes a driver's points position, all 16 playoff drivers start ahead of everyone else. It'll be like that for every playoff race without qualifying the rest of the season — the drivers in the playoffs will start ahead of everyone else. It's a bit of an anti-climactic way to set the field.
Sunday's race is the first race of the first round of the playoffs. The winner will automatically advance to the second round. Here's the entire starting lineup for the Southern 500.
1. Ryan Blaney
2. Denny Hamlin
3. Kurt Busch
4. Chase Elliott
5. Alex Bowman
6. Kyle Larson
7. Tyler Reddick
8. Aric Almirola
9. Kevin Harvick
10. Martin Truex Jr.
11. Joey Logano
12. Kyle Busch
13. Christopher Bell
14. William Byron
15. Michael McDowell
16. Brad Keselowski
17. Bubba Wallace
18. Ryan Preece
19. Ryan Newman
20. Justin Haley
21. Austin Dillon
22. Erik Jones
23. Ross Chastain
24. Chase Briscoe
25. Corey LaJoie
26. Daniel Suarez
27. BJ McLeod
28. Josh Bilicki
29. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
30. Matt DiBenedetto
31. Cole Custer
32. Anthony Alfredo
33. Cody Ware
34. Chris Buescher
35. Joey Gase
36. James Davison
37. Quin Houff