Christopher Bell sets pace in Pennzoil 400 qualifying

Christopher Bell thought he had a fast car for the first two races of the NASCAR season but didn’t get much to show for it.

On Saturday, he had the fastest car during qualifying for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and earned the first pole position start of his still fledgling career.

“My car’s been really competitive. The results really don’t show the speed we’ve had in these (Toyota) Camrys,” said the 27-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver after posting a lap of 182.673 mph on a cool and blustery day.

It was first pole in 75 Cup Series races for Bell. The statistic is misleading, given there wasn’t much qualifying after the onset of COVID the past two seasons when starting lineups were set by a formula based on performance during the previous race.

After Bell was eliminated by a crash in the season-opening Daytona 500 and by an engine problem last week in California, the pole start may portend a better result in Sunday’s race during which more cool temperatures are expected.

“I wanted it to be a little warmer so we could slide around a little more,” said the former sprint and midget car driver from Oklahoma who has one Cup Series win in 74 starts. “But I’m excited about (Sunday) for sure.

Reigning Cup Series and Pennzoil 400 champion Kyle Larson will start on the outside of the front row, followed by Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe in the second row and Chase Elliott and Joey Logano in the third.

Las Vegas brothers Kurt and Kyle Busch will roll off 31st and 37th and last, respectively. Kyle Busch will start in a rebuilt car after suffering a flat tire and crashing during Saturday morning practice.

With the advent of the new Next Gen car that has leveled the playing field to some degree, the outcome of Sunday’s race might be a little more difficult to predict. But smart money still seems to be on the Team Penske and Hendrick Racing squadrons.

Drivers representing those teams have won 10 of the past 22 spring races at LVMS, including the last three.

Penske pilot Logano was victorious in 2019 and 2020. His average finish of 8.6 over 17 races is tops among the 37 starters. Kyle Larson of the Hendrick stable won last year and also drove from the back of the pack to win last week at Auto Club Speedway in California. It was his fifth victory in seven starts dating to last season.

But Logano said you can’t make too much of what has happened in the past given the new cars to which the drivers and crews are still acclimating.

“No one has an advantage anymore,” Logano said. “I get the question ‘How you gonna race this weekend?’ This is one of my best tracks, I should be really good, but I have no clue how I’m going to run.”

Kyle Busch won the 2009 race on his hometown track. His nine top five finishes are the most among active drivers. But the early parity notwithstanding, he agrees Penske drivers Logano, Cindric and Ryan Blaney (8.8 average LVMS finish) and the Hendrick quartet of Larson, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman and William Byron must be reckoned with at LVMS.

“We’ve been competitive there, but the Penske guys over the last few years certainly seem to be the guys to beat in Vegas. And years before that it was always the Hendrick guys,” Busch said before clouting the wall in practice.

In addition to Busch’s lone victory at home, Gibbs drivers Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin have won the fall race at LVMS but “overall, JGR cars haven’t been all that consistent at running well” in Las Vegas, Busch said,

You can add Busch to his teammate Bell on the list of those who were hoping for a warm and slippery track Sunday.

“You’d rather it be a little bit warmer, so the cars are more ill-handling and you have to slide around and use more racetrack,” said the former two-time series champ. “But we’ll see what those cooler temperatures are like.”

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.