Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric will start on the pole for Sunday’s race. The rest of the field will be set through the Daytona Duels on Thursday.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. β Chase Briscoe grabbed the pole for NASCAR’s Daytona 500 on Wednesday night, earning the first pole for Toyota in the Great American race.
Briscoe ran a lap in 49.249 seconds at the 2.5-mile track. Austin Cindric will start in second after posting a 49.325-second lap.
The newest Joe Gibbs Racing driver was the last qualifier in the final round of qualifying. Four Fords were atop the leaderboard until Briscoe zoomed by for his third career pole. It’s the first Daytona 500 pole for Joe Gibbs Racing since Bobby Labonte did so in 1998.
The rest of the starting order will be set through the Daytona Duel races on Thursday. Wednesday’s qualifying session set the order for those races. There are 36 drivers locked in through NASCAR charters and four open spots.Β
Former NASCAR champions Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr. locked their spots into the Daytona 500 by being the best two qualifiers of the nine open cars.
Justin Allgaier, Corey LaJoie, Helio Castroneves, Anthony Alfredo, Chandler Smith, BJ McLeod, and J.J. Yeley will fight for the remaining two open spots in the Daytona Duels. Castroneves is locked in through a provisional, meaning the field will expand to 41 cars if he does not race his way in.
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The last driver to win the Daytona 500 from the front row was Dale Jarrett, who won the 2000 edition of the race after starting on the pole.
Alex Bowman, who started on the front row in six straight Daytona 500s from 2018 to 2023, qualified 12th.
The full starting order is here.
The 66th running of the Daytona 500 is on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
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