Kvapil Bests Allgaier For Darlington Pole to Kickoff O’Reilly Series Chase

In what is expected to be a knock-out drag-out battle between JR Motorsports teammates for the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship, it was Carson Kvapil, who came out on top of Justin Allgaier in qualifying for Saturday night’s Fleetio 200 at Darlington Raceway, the first of nine races in the Chase for the Championship.

Kvapil was the final car to go out on track in the qualifying session, and he was able to crank out a lap time of 30.424 seconds (161.636 mph), which allowed him to bump Allgaier from the top spot on the qualifying scoring sheet by a margin of 0.061 seconds.

Nobody else was even in the same zip code as the drivers of the No. 1 and No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolets, as Brandon Jones clocked in third-fastest, nearly two-tenths of a second off the lap time set by Kvapil.

This pole-winning run marks the first of Kvapil’s 67-race NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series career.

Kvapil, who picked up the first two wins of this NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series career in back-to-back races at Indianapolis and Iowa, nearly had three consecutive wins last weekend at Daytona International Speedway.

Now, the 23-year-old racer will look to work himself into being the favorite for the championship in Saturday night’s Fleetio 200.

Jesse Love will start alongside Jones in Row 2, as the defending series champion qualified fourth for Saturday night’s race, while Sam Mayer was fifth-fastest in the No. 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet.

Austin Hill, Taylor Gray, Brent Crews, Rajah Caruth, and Parker Retzlaff rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for the event.

Official Fleetio 200 Starting Lineup