NOTE: Because of weather spawned by Hurricane Matthew, NASCAR postponed the race to Sunday. Green flag: 12:05 p.m. ET. The day’s Xfinity Series race, postponed on Friday, was rescheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

Harvick holds pole position for the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He needed a fast run Thursday night to take the position from a surprising Alex Bowman.

IN-RACE UPDATES: Joey Logano | Kevin Harvick | Kyle Busch

Behind the front row of Harvick and Bowman, the rest of the top six positions will be filled by Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart and AJ Allmendinger. Of those half-dozen, only Harvick, Busch and Elliott are in the Chase.

It’s the best Cup start for Bowman, who is driving the No. 88 car this week in place of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

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Harvick said he could have been better. He lost speed in the final corners.

“The car was too loose the time before. And I got to the green better. It was good in (Turns) 1 and 2; but I felt like I gave up a little something in (Turns) 3 and 4 coming to the checkered.

“This has just been a fun car to drive. Hopefully we can get it dialed in race trim.”

Bowman impressed in his continuing work for Hendrick Motorsports.

“We struggled when we first rolled off the truck in race trim and got our car a little bit better and better and better,” he said. “Hopefully what we learned in qualifying, we can apply some of that stuff to the race trim stuff and go from there.”

Harvick set the pace in the first round of qualifying, mirroring his practice speed. All Chase drivers made the second round, but Bowman surprised the field with his lap of 196.200 mph. Kasey Kahne and Allmendinger made the final round, and Stewart made a late run to the final dozen.

That left four Chase drivers out of the final round: Matt Kenseth, Austin Dillon, Brad Keselowski and Kurt Busch.

Before Cup drivers qualified, Xfinity Series cars were on the track for what might be a critical practice for their scheduled Friday race. With Friday’s qualifying rained out, the Xfinity starting lineup was set on practice speeds from Thursday’s two runs.

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