Another qualifying washout puts Larson on pole in Charlotte

Kyle Larson will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the green flag on Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway after weather canceled practice and qualifying for the fourth time in the Chase.

The remnants of Hurricane Isaias, which made landfall as a Category 2 in the Florida Panhandle on Friday, moved into the Charlotte area early on Saturday. It is expected to linger until sometime on Sunday, with NASCAR planning to run the Cup Series race on schedule and then the postponed O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at 8pm ET.

Larson, the championship points leader, starts on the pole via the performance metric. He will share the front row with Chase Briscoe, who enters the weekend as the most recent winner in the series. The two finished first and second in Las Vegas a week ago.

“It’s definitely a great start because we haven’t got to start up in any of these Chase races because of the metric, for the part,” Briscoe said. “We’ve been 20th on back. So, from that standpoint, it’s really good. The hard part is the guy we’re trying to catch for the championship will be beside me, and I need to gain all the points I can on him.

“Yeah, if we qualify, maybe he doesn’t qualify up there, but maybe I don’t either. So, I’m just taking my second place and going on. It’s good; outside of Kyle, everybody else is behind us that I’m racing. But the goal is to be the champion, not to be second or third in points. Maybe the (No.) 5 will miss it at the beginning of the race like he did last week and still won’t get stage points, but just having that No. 1 pit stall will be a big advantage for them, and starting up front is still an advantage.”

The top 17 starting grid spots feature 15 Chase drivers.

Tyler Reddick will start third, Ryan Blaney fourth, and Austin Cindric fifth. William Byron will start sixth, Joey Logano seventh, and Bubba Wallace eighth. Chase Elliott will start ninth.

The only non-Chase driver in the top 10 is Shane van Gisbergen. Carson Hocevar starts 11th, Denny Hamlin 12th, Chris Buescher 13th, Ty Gibbs 14th, and Daniel Suarez 15th.

Christopher Bell and Ryan Preece are the two lowest-starting Chase drivers. Bell will start 17th and Ryan Preece 24th.

Sunday’s race is the sixth Chase race and the first fall oval race at Charlotte since 2017. The winner of that race was the now-retired Martin Truex Jr.

There are 39 teams entered in the Bank of America 400. In addition to the Charter teams, the Open entries are Corey Heim (23XI Racing), Gray Gaulding (Garage 66), and BJ McLeod (NY Racing Team).

NEXT: The Bank of America 400 at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday.