FORT WORTH, Texas -- Jimmie Johnson will start on the pole at Texas, where he is a seven-time winner. With Johnson leading the way after a final-stage fast lap of 188.890 mph to get his first pole anywhere since 2016, Hendrick Motorsports took the top three qualifying spots Friday. William Byron was second, and Chase Elliott third. NASCAR made some tweaks to its qualifying procedures after all 12 drivers in the final round failed to log an official lap two weeks ago at the two-mile Auto Club Speedway in California. Drivers idled on pit road until the final second to attempt their qualifying lap, and they all blew the timing. There were still some issues in Texas, with Clint Bowyer calling qualifying an "epic fail" after he qualified 25th. He was upset after the first stage, when he said he was impeded by Ryan Newman trying to get on the track during the first stage and eventually missed the cutoff for the top 24 to get to the second stage. Newman had started to move and then shifted behind another car in line on pit row. But the rear of his car stuck out in the middle lane that is supposed to remain clear between cars on either side of that, though NASCAR said afterward that Bowyer had room to get around him. Daniel Suarez qualified fourth using a strategy different than most. He went out alone on the track for his laps during qualifying. Johnson, who is 15th in points this season, also had the top speeds in practice sessions earlier Friday. It was his first pole since the season he won the last of his seven Cup championships. "It's been a long couple of years, and we still have a ways to go," Johnson said. "Certainly race day is much more important than Friday, but we've been working so hard. ... Top of the chart all day long, and a great start for this Ally team. I'm really proud of everybody for keeping the faith and working hard." The last time Johnson won the pole at the 1 1/2-mile Texas track was 2012. He won from the pole that day, and has won at Texas five more times since then. Ejected chief: After the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota failed on two attempts through the inspection line for qualifying, car chief Jason Overstreet was ejected. The team for driver Erik Jones was also penalized with a 15-minute deduction of practice time, which will be enforced Saturday. Bowman's backup: Alex Bowman slammed hard into the outside of Turn 2 during the first round of qualifying, heavily damaging the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and stopping the session briefly. There was too much damage, and Bowman will have to use a backup car in the race. Who's out: With only 39 cars entered into the race, everybody made the field for Sunday's race.<doc-sep>Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press Jimmie Johnson dominated qualifying Friday to capture the pole for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas. Johnson finished first in all three rounds of qualifying and beat out Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott by less than a tenth of a second for the pole. Here are the full results of Friday's qualifying, courtesy of NASCAR.com (time in seconds): 1. Jimmie Johnson: 28.588 2. William Byron: 28.660 3. Chase Elliott: 28.682 4. Daniel Suarez: 28.741 5. Austin Dillon: 28.862 6. Denny Hamlin: 28.895 7. Daniel Hemric: 28.905 8. Joey Logano: 28.928 9. Ty Dillon: 28.956 10. Bubba Wallace: 28.990 11. Erik Jones: 29.071 12. Brad Keselowski: 29.412 Video Play Button Videos you might like 13. Ryan Blaney: 28.927 14. Paul Menard: 28.937 15. Michael McDowell: 28.964 16. Kyle Busch: 28.971 17. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: 28.971 18. Ryan Newman: 29.005 19. Chris Buescher: 29.016 20. Martin Truex Jr.: 29.161 21. Aric Almirola: 29.226 22. Kyle Larson: 29.226 23. Kevin Harvick: 30.135 24. Alex Bowman: 0.000 25. Clint Bowyer: 29.096 26. Matt DiBenedetto: 29.110 27. Ryan Preece: 29.164 28. David Ragan: 29.265 29. Matt Tifft: 29.265 30. Kurt Busch: 29.283 31. Corey Lajoie: 29.305 32. Landon Cassill: 29.429 33. Parker Kligerman: 29.549 34. B.J. McLeod: 29.844 35. Ross Chastain: 29.987 36. Bayley Currey: 30.235 37. Reed Sorenson: 30.513 38. Garrett Smithley: 30.530 39. Timmy Hill: 31.416 The pole marked Johnson's first of the 2019 season and the first for Hendrick since Byron captured the Daytona 500 pole. Johnson now has 36 career Cup Series poles, but Friday's was his first since 2016, which was the last year he won the points title. After earning the pole in runaway fashion, Johnson talked about how it felt to be back up front: While Hendrick Motorsports had a banner day, Alex Bowman did not enjoy as much success as his teammates. He will start 24th due to a mishap at the start of the second round of qualifying. As seen in the following video, Bowman hit the wall, which caused a delay and rendered him unable to continue: Bowman wasn't the only notable driver to falter in the second round, as Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson, Aric Almirola, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch all failed to make the final round. Busch has fallen short of the final round of qualifying in consecutive weeks after winning the previous two Cup Series races. While it wasn't a huge surprise to see Johnson fare well at a track he has long dominated, there were some surprises who managed to qualify inside the top 10. Chief among them are Daniel Hemric and Bubba Wallace, who are both outside the top 25 in points. It isn't expected that they will vie for a win Sunday, but Johnson may have his best chance to take the checkered flag in a long time. His average finish of 9.8 at Texas is second to only Elliott among active drivers, and his seven wins are four more than the next closest competitor—Kyle Busch. Johnson has not won a race since 2017, but considering how good his car looked in qualifying and practice, he is undoubtedly among the top contenders entering the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500.<doc-sep>Can you believe it had been 29 races since Jimmie Johnson's last top-5 finish? (AP Photo/Larry Papke) Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway was the 225th time Jimmie Johnson has finished in the top 10. He was sitting on 224 for 10 months. Johnson was fifth on Sunday after starting first. It was his first top-five finish since he was fifth in the 2018 Coca-Cola 600. Yes, seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson went the final 23 races of 2018 and the first six races of 2019 without a top-five finish. Kinda crazy, isn’t it? We are definitely moving in the right direction,” Johnson said after the race. “Car was good in clean air and had a lot of speed in it, so I think we have found kind of center for our cars and what has to happen. It was a little evil in traffic, and I had a heck of a time on green flag restarts, but really worked hard to get it up underneath me and tightening the car up a little bit for us to race. Ended up having great pace and decent drivability, so are working in the right direction.” Hendrick Motorsports had the top three qualifiers on Friday and all four cars ended up in the top 18. Johnson was fifth, William Byron was sixth, Chase Elliott was 13th and Alex Bowman finished 18th. There used to be times when Hendrick would get all four cars in the top 10. But this could be a decent launching point. Drivers who have led the most laps are 3-6 with the 2019 rules Drivers who lead the most laps in a race are less successful in 2019 than they were in 2018. Through the first six post-Daytona 500 races in 2018, five were won by the driver who led the most laps. Only Phoenix, where Kevin Harvick beat Kyle Busch, was won by a driver who didn’t have the most laps led. In 2019, drivers who lead the most laps have won just three of the six races after the Daytona 500. Sunday’s winner, Denny Hamlin, led 45 laps. Both Busch and Johnson led more and Ryan Blaney also led 45 laps. Busch has won two races when leading the most laps in 2019 and Brad Keselowski made it three when he led 446 of 500 laps a week ago at Martinsville. Does the decline from five to three year-over-year tell us anything? Maybe. Clean air and track position are more of a priority in 2019. Drivers who get out front do seem harder to pass than before. Story continues Could single-car qualifying come back? NASCAR vice president Steve O’Donnell teased the possible return of single-car qualifying after what happened at Texas on Friday. NASCAR’s new group qualifying format was not without controversy as Clint Bowyer got blocked on pit road and drivers still waited until the end of the rounds to post their qualifying laps. ICYMI: @NASCAR's @odsteve on #TMDNASCAR alludes that single-car qualifying is being considered to alleviate what happened on Friday at @TXMotorSpeedway pic.twitter.com/4pgraOALVL — SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) April 1, 2019 This is a return that should not be teased. It should be happening right now. Qualifying should be a way of determining who has the fastest short-run car. And group qualifying at tracks where drafting is involved has turned into a racing lottery. While you need a fast car to get a good starting position, you also need a good position within the draft to maximize that starting position. There’s nothing wrong with single-car qualifying. It may be less “exciting” than group qualifying but it’s way more fair. Sometimes you have to do the fair thing and not the exciting thing. Fox’s inability to follow strategy Sunday’s race at Texas had everything but multi-car crashes. With the way that cautions unfolded in the final stage, teams were on varying fuel and tire strategies. Because of Texas’ new pavement and the durable tires assigned to the cars, teams weren’t simply bolting on four tires with every pit stop. Some weren’t taking tires and solely playing the fuel game. Some were taking two tires. Some were taking four. You wouldn’t have really known that if you were trying to casually follow the race over the last 100 laps through Fox’s broadcast. Hamlin led 28 of the final 32 laps thanks to his pit strategy. If you were following along closely, you would have been able to figure out that Hamlin had a great strategy that put him in a position to win as the final 74 laps of the race unfolded. If you weren’t, well, surprise! Hamlin took over the lead. Fox’s inability to coherently explain to viewers what was happening on the track likely has something to do with former crew chief Larry McReynolds being stationed at the network’s studio in Charlotte. Like most fans, McReynolds is watching the race remotely. But that doesn’t excuse that inability. These are professionals who get paid to broadcast NASCAR races. And they’ve been doing it for a long time. What happened on Sunday wasn’t a NASCAR first. Fans continue to deserve more from the coverage that Fox provides. Relegating McReynolds to an auxiliary role and putting Jeff Gordon in the booth alongside Darrell Waltrip added relevant driving insight. But it came at the expense of strategical and tactical insight. There are whispers that Waltrip could be retiring after the 2019 season. If that happens, Fox needs to put a newly former crew chief alongside Gordon to provide a coherent race-viewing experience for fans and, perhaps most importantly, start realizing that it doesn’t always have to appeal to the lowest-common denominator. – – – – – – – Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter More from Yahoo Sports:<doc-sep>
FORT WORTH, Texas – Jimmie Johnson is back in the saddle again. After leading first practice at Texas Motor Speedway and the first two rounds of qualifying, the seven-time champion bumped his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott from the top spot with seconds remaining in the final round with a lap at 188.890 mph to win the pole for Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 (at 3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The Busch Pole Award is the first for Johnson in 96 races, 36th of his career and his second at the 1.5-mile track. RELATED: Starting lineup | Full schedule for Texas “It’s been a long couple of years and we still have a ways to go and certainly race day is much more important than Friday,” said Johnson after earning his 36th Monster Energy NASCAR Cup pole. “We’re working so hard and I think we’re a bit guilty of trying too hard and maybe stepping outside of our comfort zone at times and putting set-ups on the car that just quite aren’t proven yet. “With all that said, we were very aggressive coming here, changed a lot of stuff around on our mile-and-a-half program. Top of the charts all day long. It’s a great start. I’m really proud of everybody keeping the faith and working hard.” William Byron, who crossed the line after Johnson, topped Elliott for second in time trials. “That is just a credit to the guys really, just giving us a fast car,” Byron said. “Teamwork man. Just keeping the communication down to get that hole that we did. Just teamwork. So it’s all good. It’s awesome.” Daniel Suarez’s strategy of making a single-car run and not relying on the draft paid off for the driver of the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang. He finished fourth in Round 2 to advance to the Final Round. He’ll roll off fourth on Sunday. “I was planning to go by myself without helping anyone, so I waited until everyone was shut off so I could go quick and they didn’t have time to re-fire and then go,” Suarez said. “That part played out well. The part that we just missed a little bit is that we were expecting them to make more mistakes or to wait a little bit longer, but they didn’t. “It was a good effort. That was our gamble. We were out of trouble and the car was good, fast and we didn’t have to work as hard as they did that’s for sure.” WATCH: Bowman scrapes wall Austin Dillon, Denny Hamlin, Daniel Hemric, Joey Logano, Ty Dillon and Bubba Wallace rounded out the top 10. With four minutes remaining in the first round of qualifying, Alex Bowman bounced off the wall in Turn 2. He had posted the seventh-fastest lap to advance to the next round, but was unable to continue. Bowman was seen and released from the infield care center. “I think Alex would have been right there if he hadn’t had his problems in Round 1,” Johnson added. Jimmie Johnson, currently on a 65-race winless streak, has won seven times at Texas Motor Speedway in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series; including once from the pole (2012).