SALEM, Ind. – Ty Gibbs led Saturday’s ARCA Menards Series practice and backed it up with the General Tire Pole Award for the ARCA Menards Series Kentuckiana Ford Dealers Fall Classic 200 at Salem Speedway.
It’s the first pole award for the 16-year-old grandson of NFL coach and NASCAR team owner Joe Gibbs.
Gibbs’ fast lap was 17.145 seconds at 116.535 mph.
“This is a really tough race track but it doesn’t intimidate me at all,” Gibbs said. “I believe if you’re intimidated by a race track it already has you beat.
“We were fast by ourselves for one lap but I think we have a lot left over for the race too,” he continued. “As fast as we were, we actually spent most of the time working on long run speed and I think we’re going to be pretty good.”
Sam Mayer, runner-up at Salem in the spring, qualified second ahead of Corey Heim, championship leader Michael Self and Bret Holmes.
Christian Eckes, who sits 70 points behind Self in the battle for the series championship, qualified sixth. Travis Braden, Carson Hocevar, defending race winner Chandler Smith and Joe Graf Jr. rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Saturday evening’s race.