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.

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.