Las Vegas – Christopher Bell will start from his first career pole Sunday in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
In the 10 car final round of qualifying on Saturday, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver posted a top speed of 182.673 mph around the 1.5-mile track.
Bell’s qualifying speed was more than 2 mph faster than the pole speed the last time qualifying was held for this race in 2019 (180.517 mph).
Bell’s first Cup pole comes in his 75th career start.
“That’s pretty cool, I haven’t got to qualify very much in my Cup career,” Bell told Fox Sports. “I’ll tell you what, that’s a hell of a lot more fun than qualifying with the 550 (horsepower) package. … I feel real good about our DeWalt Camry. In practice it took probably two runs to get the balance where I was comfortable.”
Click here for the starting lineup and here for qualifying results.
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Joining Bell on the front row is defending race winner Kyle Larson (182.014 mph).Â
“My balance was just a little bit tighter there that second run,” Larson told Fox Sports. “I got through (turns) one and two pretty good and just missed the bottom a little bit in (turns) three and four.”
Completing the top five is Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric in third (181.794), Chase Briscoe (181.733) and Chase Elliott (181.720).
Cindric, a rookie, has started in the top 10 in all three races this year.
“We had a lot of wind and changing conditions,” Cindric said. “I definitely feel like I learned a lot for today. I feel like I learned more about the car honestly this week than I did at Fontana – just a bit more of a stable surface and more predictable, so I learned the right things to be able to put down a good lap and get improvement from practice, so I did my part.”
Continuing their momentum from last weekend’s race in Fontana, both Richard Childress Racing cars made it to the top 10. Tyler Reddick qualified seventh and Austin Dillon came in at 10th.
Greg Biffle, making his second start for NY Racing, qualified 26th. He’ll start ahead of Chris Buescher, Justin Haley, Kurt Busch and Todd Gilliland.
Practice
Prior to qualifying, teams took part in one 35 minute practice session. At the request of teams, NASCAR changed the format for the Las Vegas weekend from what was seen in Fontana, where the field was split into two groups and given 15 minutes each.
The session was led by Larson (181.184 mph).
He was followed in the top five by Bell (180.771), Ryan Blaney (180.000), William Byron (179.778) and Logano (178.767).
Larson also had the best 10-lap average (178.981). Byron was second and Blaney was third.
“I think we’ve got pretty good speed,” Blaney told FS1. “Our best laps were five, six laps in to a run. … We learned a lot. It’s pretty crazy with all the wind today.”
Click here for the speed chart.
Unlike Fontana, practice and qualifying were tame when it came to accidents. The only one came in practice and involved a Kyle Busch wreck in Turn 3 after the left-rear tire on his No. 18 Toyota went down right as he entered the turn.
Busch, who has to go to a backup car, said there was no warning about the tire.
“Just running around there making laps,” Busch told Fox Sports. “Never heard anything that I hit (any debris). Just going down the backstretch, felt it start to go down and it just happened so fast, it was too late to slow down and do anything. Sucks for all the guys. … When they don’t hold air, you can’t make a corner.”
Fox Sports 1 reported his backup car was meant to be a “parts car” for Joe Gibbs Racing teams to harvest from during the West Coast Swing and that it’s “nowhere near” being ready.