Corey Day will start on the pole for Saturday's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
LAS VEGAS -- Corey Day will start on the pole for Saturday's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
In his No. 17 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, Day will start on the front row with Sheldon Creed in his No. 00 Road Ranger Ford for Haas Factory Team. It's his second career NOAPS pole in his 39th career start. His other pole came at Rockingham Speedway earlier this season when he led 118 of 250 laps.
Las Vegas has been a great track for Day, who transitioned from racing on dirt to racing on pavement last year -- diving into NASCAR's No. 2 division last year. He made 11 NOAPS starts last year and had his breakthrough run in this race last October, scoring a fourth-place finish that proved to be his first career top-five finish in NASCAR. Then, in the spring, he took the lead for one of the first times in his career and led nine laps that day.
Day has slid back into some of his old ways in the Chase, getting into incidents with other drivers in two of the first three races of the postseason. However, a fifth-place finish most recently at Bristol Motor Speedway and now starting on the pole at Las Vegas shows he's turning the tide.
Day sits sixth in the Chase points standings, 92 points behind Sheldon Creed who will start second. He turned in a lap averaging 180.741 mph vs. Day's 180.856 mph.
Day and Creed lead a group of nine driver's Chase drivers starting inside the top-10 for Saturday's race: Brandon Jones (third), Taylor Gray (fifth), Rajah Caruth (sixth), Justin Allgaier (seventh), Sam Mayer (eighth), Carson Kvapil (ninth) and Jesse Love (10th).
Love had the fastest 10-lap average in practice. Jeremy Clements was fastest in practice.
Austin Hill (12th), Parker Retzlaff (17th) and Sammy Smith (23rd) are the only driver's Chase drivers starting outside of the top-10 for Saturday.
Last year's winner was Aric Almirola in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Brent Crews is racing it this year and will start fourth as the only non-driver's Chase driver starting inside the top-10. The spring winner was Ross Chastain in JR Motorsports' No. 9 Chevrolet. That car is not entered for Saturday's race.
The Focused Health 302 will go green Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET on the CW, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and Performance Racing affiliates.
