{"id":307280,"date":"2026-03-01T01:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T01:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307280\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T01:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T01:18:12","slug":"tyler-reddick-earns-nascar-cup-pole-at-cota-ahead-of-ross-chastain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307280\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyler Reddick earns NASCAR Cup pole at COTA ahead of Ross Chastain"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his quest to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three races of a new season, Tyler Reddick<\/a> will start from pole position at the Circuit of the Americas. The 23XI Racing<\/a> star will be joined on the front row by a Trackhouse driver, but not the one we all expected…<\/p>\n

Ross Chastain<\/a> will start second, while his teammate Shane van Gisbergen<\/a> will start 13th in his effort to win six consecutive road\/street course races.<\/p>\n

\u201cI maybe should have called my shot earlier, but some pressure comes with that,\u201d said Reddick. \u201cI love going fast and road courses are a lot of fun in qualifying. Just proud of everyone’s effort here\u2026I don’t know where Shane is starting, but I just need to get as much of a head start on him as I can and try to stay ahead of him all day.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Watch: It’s all No. 45! Tyler Reddick takes Busch Light Pole at COTA<\/p>\n

Chastain, who earned his first Cup win at COTA in 2022, was surprised by the result: “I didn’t know what was happening. I followed Shane out, and his Safety Culture colors were actually getting closer. It was something I’ve never experienced on a road course. He’s helped me so much, so to go execute for our #1 team with (crew chief) Brandon McSwain, I feel like the car performed how we wanted it to there.”<\/p>\n

Chase Briscoe<\/a> will start third, Ryan Blaney<\/a> fourth, Chase Elliott<\/a> fifth. Michael McDowell<\/a>, AJ Allmendinger<\/a>, Christopher Bell<\/a>, Ty Gibbs<\/a>, and William Byron<\/a> filled out the remainder of the top ten.<\/p>\n

Rookie Connor Zilisch<\/a> will start 25th, and is another driver everyone will be watching on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\"Ross <\/p>\n

Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet; Shane van Gisbergen, No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet<\/p>\n

Photo by: Logan Riely \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Group A<\/p>\n

Gibbs rocketed to the top of the charts by the halfway point of the 20-minute session with a 1:38.25s, but McDowell (who led practice) soon knocked him down with a fast lap of 1:38.14s. Gibbs’ JGR teammate Bell had a strong run at the pole, but he ended up 0.057s shy of McDowell’s lap.<\/p>\n

Busch ran wide at the end of his first flying lap, taking a trip through the gravel. All eyes were on Zilisch, and the rookie enters COTA last in points among full-time drivers. He made a slight mistake in his first flying lap, which cost him a few tenths, but went out again and improved to tenth out of 19. Ricky Stenhouse Jr<\/a> also nearly spun out through the esses, but managed to collect his sideways #47 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

Group B<\/p>\n

The second group featured all of the big guns, including SVG. Brad Keselowski<\/a> was the first driver on track, but most of the drivers chose to wait until the second half of the 20-minute session.<\/p>\n

Joey Logano<\/a> was the first to break into the top ten, but it was AJ Allmendinger<\/a> who first challenged the fastest drivers from Group A. The experienced road racer missed it by just 0.005s, reaching second for the moment.<\/p>\n

But suddenly, several drivers jumped to the top of the charts with Elliott taking P1, only for Reddick to best him moments later with a 1:37.76s. He was the first driver to crack the 1:37s, followed by Briscoe, who was still almost two tenths behind the #45 Toyota.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chastain was challenging Reddick, and likely could have had pole if not for a lock-up near the end of his lap. He ended up second, just over a tenth behind Reddick.\u00a0 Surprisingly, SVG did not have the pace to go for pole, reaching 19th on his first lap and then 13th on his second lap.<\/p>\n

COTA Starting Lineup<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his quest to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three races of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[167956,68020,12314,111,139,69,50717,1057,213,22852,167957,167955],"class_list":["post-307280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-23xi-racing","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-nascar-cup","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ross-chastain","tag-shane-van-gisbergen","tag-sports","tag-trackhouse-racing-team","tag-tyler-reddick","tag-tyler-reddick-earns-nascar-cup-pole-at-cota-ahead-of-ross-chastain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}