Only three races are left in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season. Kyle Larson is on the pole for Sunday’s (Oct. 24) event at Kansas Speedway.
The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports pilot dominated at Texas Motor Speedway last week and secured a spot in the Championship 4.
Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski will line up second and third, respectively. Kyle Busch, who won at Kansas in May, begins fourth and Larson’s Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott rounds out the top five.
Busch’s fellow Joe Gibbs Racing cohorts Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. start sixth and seventh, respectively. Joey Logano is eighth, William Byron begins ninth and Christopher Bell completes the top 10 positions.
Since there’s no on-track qualifying until Phoenix Raceway, the lineup was set from an equation that measures a driver’s performance from the previous race. The driver’s and car owner’s finishing position is worth 50% (25% each), plus 15% of the driver’s fastest lap ranking from Texas and 35% of where the team owner is ranked in the owner’s standings. All are added together, and the lowest number begins first.
Cup Starting Lineup for Kansas
The Hollywood Casino 400 airs on Oct. 24 at 3 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
About the author
Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised watching motorsports and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.
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They’re still playing musical drivers in the cars whose only purpose is to be rolling roadblocks and to bring out cautions. Cars that spin out by themselves when they are two or more seconds per lap slower should be sent to the garage. Let’s see how quickly they go laps down.