It’s been an unreal start to the 2024 season for Joey Logano… at least when it comes to qualifying.
Scoring the pole for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion put his No. 22 Ford Mustang on the front row for the third consecutive race in 2024, becoming the first driver since Ricky Rudd in 2000 to start a season with three top-two starts.
With a lap time of 29.291 seconds (184.357mph) in the second and final round of qualifying at Las Vegas, Logano triumphed over 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson, who came up just 0.021 seconds short of scoring the pole position for Sunday’s 400-mile contest.
Larson will start alongside Logano on Sunday, as he looks to defend his victory from the 1.5-mile facility in Las Vegas, Nevada from October. Austin Cindric, a teammate to Logano, will start in third place while defending Las Vegas Spring race winner William Byron will start on the outside of the second row.
Bubba Wallace, driving the No. 23 Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing, was the quickest of the Toyota drivers in qualifying on Saturday, rounding out the top five. Chase Briscoe posted the sixth-quickest time in the final round of time trials, with Martin Truex, Jr., Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher, and Christopher Bell completing the top-10.
After single-round sessions at Daytona and Atlanta, Saturday at Las Vegas marked the first time the NASCAR Cup Series has run qualifying with tweaks made to the format for 2024. Now, rather than those outside the top-10 being ordered by overall speed, Group A will set the lineup for the outside lane, while Group B will line up on the inside.
Chase Elliott and Michael McDowell will start in the sixth row (11th and 12th) for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400, after being the fastest drivers that failed to advance to the final round of qualifying.
Other notables that failed to advance into the final round of time trials on Saturday include Ryan Blaney (15th), Daniel Suarez (16th), Tyler Reddick (18th), Kyle Busch (31st), Alex Bowman (23rd), Brad Keselowski (25th), and Denny Hamlin (28th).
Ross Chastain and Noah Gragson ranked first and second place in NASCAR Cup Series practice on Saturday but failed to replicate that speed in qualifying, earning starting spots of 20th and 30th, respectively.
Of the 37 drivers entered in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, only Ryan Preece, JJ Yeley, and Justin Haley didn’t post a time in the single-vehicle qualifying session on Saturday.
Preece, driving the No. 41 for Stewart-Haas Racing, was unable to post a qualifying time on Saturday after crashing his HaasTooling.com-sponsored entry into the outside wall on his fourth lap of practice when the car snapped around in the middle of the corner and spun out. Preece will start 35th, with Haley and Yeley in 36th and 37th, respectively.
Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be broadcast on FOX at 3:00 PM ET, as well as on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
