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NASCAR announced a qualifying decision for Sunday’s $11.2 million race, settling a key question before the Cup Series event.
Kyle Larson will be the last driver on track Saturday when Cup Series qualifying opens at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with Denny Hamlin directly ahead of him, according to an announcement Wednesday.
That slot matters, but it is not a starting spot. The order only decides who takes a timed lap first and who takes it last. All 36 entered cars make the field, and their lap times, run one car at a time starting at 5:35 p.m. ET Saturday on truTV, set the grid for Sunday’s South Point 400.
NASCAR builds the order from a formula tied to the car, not the driver: 70 percent of it is the car’s finish in the last race, 30 percent its rank in owner points. Lower scores go out last, according to Beyond the Flag‘s Asher Fair. Drivers near the end of the line typically get better track conditions, Fair wrote.
NASCAR CUP SERIES — SOUTH POINT 400 QUALIFYING ORDER
Las Vegas Motor Speedway • September 30, 2026
Pos
Car #
Driver
Metric Score
1
51
Cody Ware
34.900
2
4
Noah Gragson
34.800
3
21
Josh Berry
32.300
4
47
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
31.100
5
41
Cole Custer
30.900
6
88
Connor Zilisch #
30.800
7
38
Zane Smith
30.100
8
10
Ty Dillon
29.800
9
33
Austin Hill (i) (133)
27.500
10
35
Riley Herbst
26.500
11
71
Michael McDowell
24.900
12
16
A.J. Allmendinger
22.300
13
3
Austin Dillon
22.200
14
97
Shane van Gisbergen
21.900
15
34
Todd Gilliland
19.900
16
48
Alex Bowman
19.800
17
43
Erik Jones
17.500
18
42
John Hunter Nemechek
17.200
19
1
Ross Chastain
16.200
20
6
Brad Keselowski
13.800
21
77
Carson Hocevar (C)
26.400
22
17
Chris Buescher (C)
20.600
23
22
Joey Logano (C)
15.200
24
7
Daniel Suárez (C)
14.600
25
54
Ty Gibbs (C)
13.700
26
60
Ryan Preece (C)
11.200
27
45
Tyler Reddick (C)
9.800
28
9
Chase Elliott (C)
9.500
29
23
Bubba Wallace (C)
9.000
30
24
William Byron (C)
8.500
31
19
Chase Briscoe (C)
5.200
32
20
Christopher Bell (C)
5.100
33
12
Ryan Blaney (C)
5.000
34
2
Austin Cindric (C)
4.400
35
11
Denny Hamlin (C)
2.700
36
5
Kyle Larson (C)
1.000
(C) = Chase Driver. Data provided by NASCAR Statistics, 9/30/2026.
Larson, Hamlin Draw Late Las Vegas Qualifying Spots
The Chase adds a twist. Non-playoff cars are slotted first, so all 16 Chase drivers run last, Fair wrote in a Sept. 19 Beyond the Flag report. That’s why Carson Hocevar’s 26.400 score, worse than several non-Chase cars, still puts him 21st. A washout would erase the order entirely. NASCAR has canceled eight Cup qualifying sessions on oval tracks this year, and the same formula then sets the grid.
But rain appears highly unlikely to play any part in the Las Vegas qualifying session Saturday or the race itself the following day.
Larson, who won at Kansas Speedway last Sunday, carries a 1.000 score. Hamlin (2.700), Austin Cindric (4.400), Ryan Blaney (5.000), Christopher Bell (5.100) and Chase Briscoe (5.200) round out the final six. Larson leads Hamlin by 26 points in the Chase standings, according to a Speedway Media report.
Cody Ware (34.900) goes first, then Noah Gragson, Josh Berry, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Cole Custer. Gragson and Berry finished 36th and 35th at Kansas.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway and South Point 400 Purse
Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a 1.5-mile asphalt D-shaped oval in Clark County, Nevada, banked 20 degrees in the turns and 9 degrees on the straights. The race runs 267 laps (400.5 miles) Sunday with green flag set for 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, with stages ending at laps 80 and 165, according to Speedway Media.
Older pavement makes it rough. Washboard bumps sit on corner entry, tires wear fast, and the racing groove climbs toward the wall by mid-race, according to The Autopian‘s Aedan McHugh, who has worked as an Xfinity Series engineer. Joey Logano has four wins here, while Hamlin, Larson and Brad Keselowski have three apiece.
The Cup weekend purse totals $11,233,037, according to veteran NASCAR insider Bob Pockrass. That figure bundles race payouts, charter money, contingency awards and a contribution to the year-end points fund, Pockrass reported.
NASCAR stopped publishing driver earnings in 2016. Applying court-filed payout figures to this purse puts the winning team near $579,000, with a driver’s typical 40 percent cut around $232,000 for a win and $150,000 for 10th. Team Penske collected about $640,000 of a $12.4 million purse at 2025 Phoenix, according to Forbes writer Greg Engle.
The 40 percent is an estimate.
“Every deal is different,” former Cup driver Landon Cassill said in 2014, as quoted by The Gazette. Shares range from 5 percent to 50 percent, he said. The charter base of roughly $141,000 stays with the team.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist who covers MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, boxing, golf, and Olympic sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Newspaper and Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering the Olympics, pro baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin