FORT WORTH, Texas — Kurt Busch earned the pole Friday for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway with the fastest qualifying lap ever on a 11/2-mile track.

Busch averaged 200.915 mph on his only lap in the final round.

Denny Hamlin (200.617 mph), Kevin Harvick (200.372 mph), Erik Jones (200.326 mph) and Kyle Busch (200.252 mph) also beat the track record of 200.111 set by Tony Stewart in 2014.

Seven of the eight championship contenders will start in the top nine spots nine. The only one who won’t is Chase Elliott, who didn’t get through tech inspection in time to make a qualifying run. He will start 34th.

Elliott was still frustrated about what happened in the last race, when he was wrecked by Denny Hamlin when leading two laps shy of the checkered flag.

Elliott said he hadn’t spoken with Hamlin, who reached out by text and apologized publicly on social media for what he called poor execution of an aggressive move late at Martinsville.

“I don’t know that my thoughts today are a whole lot different than they were then,” Elliott said at Texas Motor Speedway, where the Cup Series runs Sunday. “I am still pretty frustrated about it. … Definitely not happy about it and I don’t think a whole lot has changed.”

Instead of the possible win that would have clinched a spot in NASCAR’s championship race, Elliott arrived at Texas eighth among the eight championship contenders. He’s 26 points behind the top four with only two races left before the cutdown for the championship race.

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