Kyle Larson is on the pole for Saturday night's NASCAR Cup Series' Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway after inclement weather wiped out qualifying.
BRISTOL, TENN. -- Inclement weather wiped out qualifying for Saturday night's NASCAR Cup Series' Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The lineup for Saturday night's race was set by the metric in the NASCAR rulebook: 70% the car's finishing position in the previous race and 30% the car's owner points position. That put Kyle Larson and Joey Logano on the front row for the race.
Larson and Logano finished first and third in last weekend's race at World Wide Technology Raceway Gateway. They're currently second and seventh in the standings, nine and 51 points behind points leader Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin continued a sweep of the top-five starting spots at Bristol, rounded out by William Byron and Carson Hocevar. Byron, Hocevar and Hamlin finished fourth, eighth and ninth, respectively, at Gateway. Hocevar and Byron are ninth and 15th in the standings, 88 and 114 points behind Hamlin, respectively.
In all, seven Chase drivers will start in the top-10 at Bristol with Austin Cindric and Bubba Wallace starting eighth and 10th, respectively.
Alex Bowman, who finished second at Gateway, will start sixth. Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon also capitalized on their best runs in a while to start inside the top-10, in seventh and ninth, respectively.
Brad Keselowski will start Saturday night's race doing what he couldn't do on the final lap of this race last year -- get ahead of Christopher Bell. The defending Bristol Night Race winner will start 12th, one position behind Keselowski.
Other Chase drivers starting outside of the top-10 include Ty Gibbs (13th), Ryan Preece (16th), Tyler Reddick (20th) and Chris Buescher (23rd). Rounding out the Chase field in the starting lineup are four in a row starting deep in the field: Chase Briscoe (26th), Chase Elliott (27th), Daniel Suarez (28th) and Ryan Blaney (29th).
Reddick starts 20th at Bristol after finishing 25th at Gateway. He is one of six drivers starting 20th or worse after Gateway wasn't kind to the Chase drivers.
Buescher and the four other drivers behind Reddick to start Bristol will start there because of incidents at Gateway. Buescher, Elliott and Blaney all blew brake rotors in the race. Elliott's blown brake rotor swept Briscoe up in a race-ending incident.
Suarez had crash damage that depressed his Gateway finish and his metric at Bristol.
Every past NextGen Bristol winners is in the Chase: Chris Buescher (September 2022), Denny Hamlin (September 2023, March 2024), Kyle Larson (September 2024, April 2025), Christopher Bell (September 2025) and Ty Gibbs (April 2026).
Inclement weather also canceled practice, meaning drivers will go into Saturday night's race practically blind for what their cars will have. The race is set to launch just after 7:30 p.m. ET on USA, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and PRN affiliates.
