Christopher Bell Leads Dominant Toyota Performance In Cup Qualifying

Toyota Racing looks quite sporty in Sin City as the manufacturer swept the top-four starting spots for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube. However, none of them turned as fast a lap as Christopher Bell, who rocketed around the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 28.853 seconds (187.156 mph) to secure the pole position.

Bell, 31, locked up his 15th career NASCAR Cup Series pole position in his 221st attempt with the top qualifying time on Saturday, and the pole marks driver's fourth Cup Series pole at Las Vegas, which is the most of any driver at the facility. Bell, who is looking for his first win of the season, says his confidence is soaring heading into Sunday's race.

"I've talked about this a lot throughout the last couple of races, but just super proud of my team," Bell said after qualifying. "We're finally getting back to where we need to be. We used to be able to qualify really well on these intermediates, then, I don't know, it feels like we fell a little bit off, and now we've got it back. My engineers, my crew chief, my mechanics, my pit crew have been doing such a good job in 2026. It's so fun to drive this No. 20, and I'm so excited about tomorrow."

As Joe Gibbs Racing is embroiled in a lawsuit against its former competition director, Chris Gabehart, and Spire Motorsports, the JGR team will go into Sunday's race with the top-three drivers on the starting grid.

Joining Bell on the front row for Sunday's race will be Denny Hamlin, the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry. Hamlin, a 60-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner, missed out on his 49th career pole position by 0.150 seconds.

Ty Gibbs, driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry, will start from the third position. And Gibbs, who has had his name negatively mentioned by Gabehart in the lawsuit filings, has come to life over the last few weeks. Gibbs comes into this race with back-to-back fourth-place finishes as he continues to seek his first career NASCAR Cup Series win.

Bubba Wallace was the fourth Toyota driver in the running order in Saturday's qualifying session, and continued the solid start to his 2026 season. Wallace enters Sunday's race at Las Vegas third in the championship standings.

Two-time and defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson will start fifth, and he was followed by Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Preece, William Byron, and Chris Buescher, who will round out the top-10 starters in Sunday's field.

The one Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who will start mired in the pack is Chase Briscoe, who will start 18th. By virtue of a last-place finish last weekend, and three 36th-place-or-worse finishes in the opening four races, Briscoe had to go onto the track first in the qualifying session, which proved to be a major disadvantage. Briscoe, a championship 4 contender a year ago, will look to turn around his season on Sunday.

Another shocking less-than-stellar qualifying run belonged to Joey Logano. Logano, a four-time Las Vegas Motor Speedway winner, will roll from the 21st position on the starting grid as he aims to add a fifth LVMS win to his record.

Logano turned the exact lap time that Justin Allgaier did in the session. Allgaier is substituting for Alex Bowman this weekend behind the wheel of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet as Bowman continues to recover from a vertigo diagnosis.

The NASCAR Cup Series Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube is scheduled for Sunday, March 15, and will be televised on FS1 with television coverage set to kick off at 4:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the race.

Official Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube Starting Lineup

Pos	Car	Driver	Lap time	Speed
1	20	Christopher Bell	28.853	187.156
2	11	Denny Hamlin	29.003	186.188
3	54	Ty Gibbs	29.063	185.803
4	23	Bubba Wallace	29.068	185.771
5	5	Kyle Larson	29.103	185.548
6	12	Ryan Blaney	29.160	185.185
7	45	Tyler Reddick	29.168	185.134
8	60	Ryan Preece	29.205	184.900
9	24	William Byron	29.217	184.824
10	17	Chris Buescher	29.245	184.647
11	3	Austin Dillon	29.250	184.615
12	38	Zane Smith	29.252	184.603
13	7	Daniel Suarez	29.279	184.433
14	43	Erik Jones	29.285	184.395
15	9	Chase Elliott	29.289	184.370
16	97	Shane van Gisbergen	29.294	184.338
17	1	Ross Chastain	29.338	184.062
18	19	Chase Briscoe	29.343	184.030
19	77	Carson Hocevar	29.356	183.949
20	35	Riley Herbst	29.363	183.905
21	22	Joey Logano	29.376	183.824
22	48	Justin Allgaier (i)	29.376	183.824
23	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	29.387	183.755
24	8	Kyle Busch	29.455	183.331
25	88	Connor Zilisch #	29.478	183.187
26	42	John Hunter Nemechek	29.493	183.094
27	34	Todd Gilliland	29.493	183.094
28	6	Brad Keselowski	29.504	183.026
29	16	A.J. Allmendinger	29.530	182.865
30	71	Michael McDowell	29.652	182.113
31	2	Austin Cindric	29.690	181.879
32	21	Josh Berry	29.745	181.543
33	51	Cody Ware	29.770	181.391
34	4	Noah Gragson	30.059	179.647
35	41	Cole Custer	30.250	178.512
36	10	Ty Dillon	30.607	176.430

# Rookie of the Year contender
(i) driver ineligible to score points