Toyota's Vegas reign continues as Bell takes pole

Toyota continued its reign of dominance in NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, its drivers making it two straight races at the track with a top-three sweep.

Christopher Bell, who had been fastest in practice, followed that up with the pole for the Pennzoil 400. Bell beat the field with a lap of 187.156 mph (28.853s). It is his 15th pole in the Cup Series and fourth in Las Vegas.

“I didn't know what last time I was going to run, but just from practice, I think in practice, what I read, like at 29.30, so a half a second pickup is, I think, pretty much in line with what we normally pick up from practice to race trim,” Bell said. “So from that standpoint, I don't think it was a surprising lap time, but to beat the field by over a tenth is something that you don't see that very often. So just goes to show that my engineers, my crew chief, my mechanics, they executed really well.

“The Toyotas clearly have plenty of speed in them, and whenever I kept seeing Toyota after Toyota go and jump to the top of the pylon, I knew that we were going to be in position. So you have a good lap, and then thankfully, I didn't make any mistakes on my lap, and my team did their job, and we got rewarded for it.”

Fall race winner Denny Hamlin qualified second, clocking in at 186.188 mph. Ty Gibbs qualified third at 185.803 mph, and Bubba Wallace qualified fourth at 185.771 mph. Kyle Larson was the fastest Chevrolet driver and completed the top five in qualifying at 185.548 mph.

Ryan Blaney was the fastest Ford driver in qualifying at sixth with a lap of 185.185 mph. Tyler Reddick was seventh fastest at 185.134 mph, Ryan Preece was eighth fastest at 184.900 mph, and William Byron was ninth fastest at 184.824 mph. Chris Buescher rounded out the top 10 at 184.647 mph.

Chase Elliott qualified 15th, Shane van Gisbergen qualified 16th, Ross Chastain was 17th, and Chase Briscoe was 18th. Joey Logano qualified 21st with Justin Allgaier, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, qualifying 22nd. Kyle Busch qualified 24th, Connor Zilisch in 25th and Brad Keselowski in 28th.

The defending race winner, Josh Berry, qualified 32nd.

NEXT: The Pennzoil 400 at 4 p.m. ET Sunday.

RESULTS