AVONDALE, Ariz. – Justin Allgaier will start on the pole for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series finale at Phoenix Raceway, the Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 200.
Allgaier earned the top spot by virtue of NASCAR’s performance-based metric formula.
The NASCAR matrix factors in a driver’s lap speed ranking from the previous race, the last race finish for both driver and owner and the car’s current rank in the owner standings.
Lap speed is weighted at 15 percent, previous race finish at 25 percent for the driver and owner results and owner points position at 35 percent to calculate the final metric score.
Driver and owner playoff-eligible entries are ranked at the front of the field based on their metric scores from lowest to highest, with all non-playoff entries lined up behind the playoff cars in similar fashion.
Allgaier earned the top spot with a metric score of 2.9, factoring in a second-place finish last weekend at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, the eighth-fastest lap from that event and his second-place seeding in the current point standings.
Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric and Justin Haley – the other three members of the Championship 4 – will fill out the front two rows of the grid at the one-mile desert oval.
Harrison Burton, the winner of the last two Xfinity Series races, rolls from fifth as the best non-championship-eligible driver.
To view the complete starting lineup and performance matrix breakdown, click here.
Saturday’s Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 200 is scheduled for a 5 p.m. ET start, with live coverage on NBCSN, the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.