NASCAR Cup Series points leader Tyler Reddick continued to reach career-high marks for himself even while qualifying for Sunday's AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway.
KANSAS CITY, Kansas -- NASCAR Cup Series points leader Tyler Reddick continued to reach career-high marks for himself even while qualifying for Sunday's AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Reddick earned the pole for Sunday's race, marking his third pole of the 2026 season. That ties a single-season-high mark for the 23XI Racing driver just nine races into the season. He previously won three poles in a single season in 2022 and 2024.
More importantly, Reddick earned his first Kansas Cup pole for the first time since fall of 2022. The hope is the strong start will translate to a better result on Sunday.
"We came here this past spring, we just... missed the mark pretty bad," Reddick said. "So, when we came back here last fall, it was a huge emphasis for us... to come back here with something better and we didn't need a lot of laps with the car that we had, but I felt like it was much more the direction where we needed to be."
Reddick finished seventh in the fall, snapping a skid of finishes of 17th, 25th and 20th in the preceding Kansas Cup races. He believes Sunday could be even better than what they did in the fall.
"Today (Saturday) was just a car that had great handling, certainly the speed was there as well in the sheet, but very, very comfortable what I had. I feel like we did a good job of building off of last fall and when you're able to do that, you can be comfortable, consistent, and run good laps, and then when it comes to qualifying, you have the confidence to put a lap like that down," Reddick said.
Reddick took his 14th career pole, tying Davey Allison, Tim Richmond, Dave Marcis and Glen Wood on the all-time Cup poles chart.
Right alongside Reddick to start Sunday's race will be boss Denny Hamlin. He qualified second for the second Kansas Cup race in a row, improving his NextGen Kansas average start from 14.4 to 11.7, to match his NextGen Kansas average finish of 7.5.
In the most recent Kansas Cup race, Hamlin started second and led 159 of 273 laps. He finished second after a run-in with driver Bubba Wallace on the final lap.
Wallace qualified 10th, bookending the five Toyotas that qualified in the top-10: Reddick (pole), Hamlin (second), Ty Gibbs (third), Chase Briscoe (fifth) and Wallace (10th).
Christopher Bell, who also battled with Wallace in the finish to the most recent Kansas Cup race, will start 11th.
The other 23XI Racing drivers, Riley Herbst and Corey Heim, qualified 22nd and 24th, respectively, trading places with each other from how they ran in practice.
Kyle Larson led all Chevrolet drivers in qualifying, vastly improving upon a poor showing in practice. He was 25th-fastest overall in practice and didn't run enough laps to get a 10 consecutive lap average in. Yet, he easily qualified fourth for Sunday's race.
Larson was alone in the top-10 for Hendrick Motorsports. The only Chevrolet team with multiple drivers starting in the top-10 was Spire Motorsports. Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez qualified sixth and eighth, respectively, while teammate Michael McDowell qualified 18th.
In contrast, Larson's Hendrick teammates will start 13th (Chase Elliott), 14th (William Byron) and 33rd (Alex Bowman) in Sunday's Cup race.
Chris Buescher was the leading Ford in qualifying (seventh) after showing strength in practice. His teammates qualified 12th (Ryan Preece) and 21st (Brad Keselowski).
Ryan Blaney was the only other Ford to qualify inside the top-10 (ninth). His teammates will start 15th (Joey Logano) and 34th (Austin Cindric).
Like Larson, Logano had a big pick-up from practice to qualifying.
