Joey Logano Takes Gateway Pole By Nearly Three-Tenths of a Second; Full Starting Lineup

Joey Logano took the 35th pole of his NASCAR Cup Series career Saturday at World Wide Technology Raceway, and it wasn’t even close. The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse powered to his second pole of the 2026 season by a margin of 0.276 seconds over Kyle Larson.

It was a truly impressive qualifying performance, especially in the Next Gen era, where lap times in qualifying sessions have been virtually on top of each other since 2022.

“Obviously, qualifying was spectacular,” Logano chuckled after the run.

Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway presents a major opportunity for Logano to improve his chances at securing a fourth career NASCAR Cup Series championship. The driver, who looked for a large portion of the regular season wouldn’t make the Chase, got hot mid-season, nabbed a couple of wins, and now he comes into the second race of the Chase in the ninth seed of the Chase.

The No. 22 team has their eye on the ultimate prize.

“Well, the guys are doing a good job, and this is a racetrack that we had circled that we need to capitalize on, right? We know our points situation. We need to score max points here,” Logano said. “And starting up front will help that for sure. Just gotta manage the strategy. Definitely got a fast car though. The Shell/Pennzoil Mustang in race trim was really good. Short run, long run.”

While Larson wasn’t even in the same zip code as Logano, his run was still good enough to secure the second starting spot for the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team. Larson will now look to snap a 50-race winless streak in Sunday’s race.

The entire top-10 starting positions for the Enjoy Illinois 300 were secured by Chase contenders.

Ryan Blaney, who has had several close-but-no-cigar moments at Gateway in the four previous editions of this race, will start third. Blaney was the fastest driver in Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice.

Christopher Bell, who is coming off his first win of the season last weekend, will lineup fourth to take the green flag on Sunday.

Chase Briscoe, Carson Hocevar, Bubba Wallace, Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs, and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Sunday’s race at Gateway.

Chase contenders who failed to qualify inside the top-10 were: Austin Cindric (13th), Ryan Preece (14th), Daniel Suarez (15th), Tyler Reddick (18th), Chris Buescher (21st), and William Byron (24th).

Official Enjoy Illinois 300 Starting Lineup