McDowell Earns First Cup Pole For Spire Motorsports

Michael McDowell (right) won the Busch Light Pole Award Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (HHP/Tom Copeland photo)

LAS VEGAS – He may have moved to a new team, but Michael McDowell is still one of the better qualifiers of late in the NASCAR Cup Series, and he proved why Saturday afternoon.

McDowell laid claim to his seventh career Busch Pole Award at stock car racing’s top level, touring the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 28.883 seconds (186.961 mph) with the No. 71 Group 1001 Chevrolet.

All seven of McDowell’s Cup Series pole positions have come in the past 40 races. Saturday also marked the first-ever pole for Spire Motorsports, co-owned by Jeff Dickerson and T.J. Puchyr.

While McDowell has topped qualifying at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway twice in his career, his Las Vegas pole run marked his first such effort on a 1.5-mile oval that utilizes a traditional intermediate-track setup.

“I don’t know if me and Travis (Peterson, crew chief) have quite picked up where we left off last season, but I’m so proud of all the men and women at Spire Motorsports whose effort goes into making moments like this possible,” said McDowell, who won six poles with Front Row Motorsports in 2024 and shifted to Spire during the offseason.

“We had three cars (qualify) in the top 10 last week at Phoenix (Raceway), and then to come here to our first (intermediate) mile-and-a-half and have this much speed … it’s a testament to all the hard work that this organization has put in to keep improving and get closer to where we believe we can be,” he continued. “This gives us great pit stall selection, a great opportunity to lead some laps, and put ourselves in position to capitalize in the race.

“When you run wide open (in qualifying) at Vegas, it’s scary. It really is. It might not look like much (trouble), but it’s wild out there.”

Joining McDowell on the front row for the Pennzoil 400 is defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano, whose lap of 28.898 seconds (186.864 mph) in the No. 22 Pennzoil Ultra Premium Ford was just .015 seconds shy of McDowell’s pole-winning mark.

Logano is a four-time winner in Sin City who topped back-to-back Las Vegas spring races in 2019-’20. He hopes to break a tie with NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson and capture his record-setting fifth victory at the facility on Sunday.

“This was a bit of a different qualifying session than we usually have here,” Logano admitted. “Usually handling comes into play a bit more than it did there; it seemed like all the cars handled pretty well and there was a lot more wide-open time from everyone. It stings to be so close to a pole two weeks in a row and not get one, but overall, I think we’ve got something to work with in race trim.”

Logano’s Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric starts third (28.909/186.793) alongside hometown hero and two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, who qualified fourth (28.933/186.638) and won in 2009 at Las Vegas.

Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones starts fifth (28.934 186.632) and was the only Toyota driver to qualify inside the first six rows.

Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, William Byron, Zane Smith, and 2024 Pennzoil 400 winner Kyle Larson closed out the top 10 in single-car time trials.

A pair of RFK Racing Fords in Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece start 11th and 12th, respectively, with Christopher Bell – who has won the last three Cup Series races on the schedule and aims for four in a row Sunday – lining up 13th as the best of the four Joe Gibbs Racing entries.

Other notables starting deeper in the field include Denny Hamlin (15th), Chase Elliott (16th), Brad Keselowski (27th), and New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen (28th).

In addition to Busch, two other Las Vegas natives are in Sunday’s lineup as well. Noah Gragson qualified 21st in a Front Row Motorsports Ford and Riley Herbst was 34th in a 23XI Racing Toyota.

Las Vegas marks the first race this year where only the 36 chartered entries make up the Cup Series field.

Broadcast coverage of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 is slated for 3:30 p.m. ET, live on FS1, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.