Las Vegas Qualifying Order: Why Larson Goes Last

Most weeks, a qualifying order is a spreadsheet nobody reads until Saturday afternoon. The one NASCAR released for Las Vegas Motor Speedway reads more like a coroner’s report from Kansas, with every number on it traceable to something that went right or badly wrong at the 1.5-mile track in Kansas City last Sunday.

Kyle Larson goes out last in Cup qualifying. Carson Hocevar goes out first among the 16 Chase drivers, and one Stage 2 restart explains why. Noah Gragson is second in the whole queue because his engine let go. And Austin Hill appears on both lists, which tells you everything about how his Saturday is going to go.

Here’s what the official Las Vegas qualifying orders actually say, and why the running order matters more than it looks.

The rule that sends all 16 Chase cars to the back of the line

Both the Cup Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series have exactly 36 entries this weekend, so nobody goes home. Qualifying is single-car, single-lap for both, and it all happens Saturday, October 3: O’Reilly cars at 3:05 p.m. ET on ESPN Unlimited, Cup cars at 5:35 p.m. ET on truTV. That’s 2:35 p.m. local time in the desert for the Cup session.

The order is set by NASCAR’s qualifying metric, a weighted formula built from the previous race’s results and owner points. A lower number sends you out later. But in Chase events, the rule book adds an override: every car eligible for the championship takes the final slots in the order, whatever its number says. The Chase group then sorts itself by the same metric.

Why should anyone care about going 36th instead of 21st? It isn’t a guaranteed pole. What a late slot buys is information. By the time Larson rolls off pit road, his crew chief will have watched 35 laps land on the timing screen and seen how the track is behaving and where the benchmark lap sits. The drivers at the front of the queue get none of that. At a place where tenths decide who starts in the top 10 and who starts buried in traffic, that’s a real edge, not a big one, but real.

Track position also counts for more than it used to. The Chase has no eliminations, and the champion is simply whoever has the most points after the finale. So every stage point on Sunday counts toward the title, and a car that starts up front has a better shot at collecting them. We’ve already seen how the new Chase math can turn a dominant night into a thin points haul. Starting 25th makes that math worse.

Hocevar’s 33rd-place tax

Hocevar’s metric is 26.4, the worst in the Chase group by almost six points. He was running 11th and had just finished fourth in Stage 1 at Kansas when he moved into Ty Gibbs on a Stage 2 restart. That set off a six-car crash that also collected Bubba Wallace, Erik Jones and Josh Berry. Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Chevrolet came away with severe splitter damage, and he finished 33rd, per NASCAR’s Kansas race report.

Without the Chase override, a 26.4 would have sent Hocevar out 11th, right behind Riley Herbst. Instead he leads the Chase group as the 21st car on track, with 15 championship rivals following him out and learning from his lap. He’s also 11th in the standings, 150 points behind Larson. That’s the downside of a Chase with no resets. One bad restart costs you a pile of points, and it also leaves you with the worst qualifying slot the following week.

At the other end of the group, the order almost exactly matches who had a good day at Kansas. Larson (1.0) goes last after a maximum-76-point afternoon: both stage wins, 235 laps led, the fastest lap and the victory. Denny Hamlin (2.7), who finished third, goes 35th. Austin Cindric (4.4) goes 34th after finishing second, 0.565 seconds behind Larson. The top of the standings is lined up nearly the same way: Larson leads Hamlin by 26 points, with Christopher Bell 50 back and Joey Logano 67 back.

Logano’s slot is worth a second look. He started from the pole at Kansas because rain washed out time trials and the rule book set the lineup. Then he finished 20th, and his 15.2 puts him only 23rd in line at Las Vegas. It’s a useful reminder that a formula-assigned pole isn’t the same as speed.

Brad Keselowski's blue and orange No. 6 Trimble Ford Mustang Dark Horse parked on pit road at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with an RFK windshield cover — Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 RFK Racing Ford on pit road at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. He is the last non-Chase driver out in Saturday’s qualifying order. Photo: Nascar9919 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

The first 20 in line: blown engines, a rookie and a Keselowski bookend

Cody Ware (34.9) opens the Cup session, and Gragson (34.8) follows him. Gragson’s slot is the one Kansas explains most clearly. His No. 4 Front Row Ford blew up in Turns 1 and 2 on Lap 114 and he was scored 36th, last in the field. Josh Berry (32.3), who ended up laps down after being caught in the Hocevar crash, goes third.

Rookie Connor Zilisch goes sixth with a 30.8. He’s 34th in driver points, the same place he was sitting when Hendrick signed him through the decade. Brad Keselowski (13.8) is the last non-Chase car out, 20th. At Kansas he was the only driver outside the Chase to crack the Stage 2 top 10.

Austin Hill’s very long Saturday

Austin Hill is ninth in the Cup order in the No. 33 (27.5). He’s marked ineligible for Cup driver points, and he’s also a Chase driver in the O’Reilly Series, where he goes 25th in the No. 21 (18.1). Put that on the official weekend schedule and his day looks like this:

2:00 p.m. ET: O’Reilly practice
3:05 p.m. ET: O’Reilly qualifying
4:30 p.m. ET: Cup practice
5:35 p.m. ET: Cup qualifying
7:30 p.m. ET: Focused Health 302, O’Reilly Series (ESPN)

That’s four sessions in two different cars, and then a Chase race with his O’Reilly title hopes on it. Hill is ninth in O’Reilly points, 106 behind the leader. The Cup laps are extra seat time on the same 1.5 miles. They could help him, or they could just tire him out before the race that matters to his season.

The O’Reilly queue has 13 Chase cars for a 12-driver Chase

Count the (C) markers in the O’Reilly order and you get 13, even though only 12 drivers made that series’ Chase. The explanation is in NASCAR’s footnote: the tag covers participants in either the owner or the driver championship. Rookie Brent Crews is 13th in driver points, so he’s outside the driver Chase. His No. 19 is still alive in the owner standings, and that’s enough to put him 34th in line (3.6).

Sheldon Creed goes last with a perfect 1.0. That follows from his overtime win at Bristol, his second Chase win after taking the opener at Darlington, per NASCAR’s Bristol race report. He leads Justin Allgaier by 11 points going into Las Vegas, the fourth of nine Chase races. Allgaier has a series-best six wins this year and goes out 35th. Rajah Caruth (19.4) leads the Chase group out and is 12th in points, 164 behind Creed. Among the non-Chase cars, William Sawalich is the last one out (5.6). He’s a race winner this season, but he’s 14th in points.

What to watch this weekend

Las Vegas is Cup race 31 of 36 and the fifth of 10 Chase races, which makes it the midpoint. Ten of the 16 Chase drivers are already at least 111 points behind Larson, and Daniel Suárez is 187 back in 16th. Some things to keep an eye on:

Does Hocevar set the bar or get swallowed by it? As the first Chase car out, his lap is the number the other 15 teams will measure against. A strong run takes some of the sting out of Kansas.
The last three slots. Cindric, Hamlin and Larson go out back to back to close the session. Hamlin won here in March after serving a Lap 84 pit-road speeding penalty and restarting 21st, and he led a race-high 134 laps, per the spring race report. Christopher Bell took the pole that day. If you want the long version of why Hamlin likes these tracks, we broke down his mile-and-a-half record.
Practice-to-qualifying turnaround. Cup practice starts at 4:30 p.m. ET and qualifying at 5:35. There’s very little time for fixes, so a team that misses in practice will be making guesses, and those guesses will show on the timing screen.
Larson’s paint. The No. 5 is running its Kyle Busch tribute scheme this weekend. Larson comes in with his 34th career Cup win, which ties him with Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr. for 26th all-time.

The South Point 400 starts Sunday at 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network. By then, Saturday’s order will have turned into a starting grid, and Hocevar will know exactly how much one Stage 2 restart at Kansas cost him.