48.808 seconds in his home state
Ross Chastain went out in the second and final round of qualifying at Daytona International Speedway on Friday and posted 48.808 seconds. Chris Buescher came within five-hundredths of it and could not go quicker. The two share the front row for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 on Saturday night.
Chastain called the moment “almost indescribable” and framed it as a career marker rather than a stepping stone. He has already been eliminated from playoff contention, so the pole buys him track position and nothing else. Buescher is locked into the 16-car postseason field.
Austin Hill qualified third, Ryan Preece fourth and Riley Herbst fifth. Shane van Gisbergen, Connor Zilisch, Austin Cindric, Joey Logano and Kyle Larson filled out the top ten. Trackhouse Racing placed all three of its cars inside the top seven.
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Three spots, five drivers, one race
Bubba Wallace, Cindric, van Gisbergen, Preece and Brad Keselowski are competing for the last three places in the Chase. Wallace and Cindric sit close enough to the line that avoiding trouble should be enough. Keselowski has conceded he needs something close to a miracle.
That leaves van Gisbergen and Preece fighting over the 16th and final berth. Van Gisbergen holds a 31-point advantage, a cushion that a superspeedway can erase in a single stage. Both start inside the top ten, which matters more at Daytona than almost anywhere else on the calendar.
The format has changed this season. Winning at Daytona in August no longer guarantees a playoff place, a rule that used to turn this race into an open audition for anyone outside the cutline. NASCAR now weights season-long results more heavily, and the summer race has lost some of its lottery quality as a result.
What the pole is worth
Forty-one cars were entered and one failed to make the field. Starting position at Daytona is worth less than at any other track on the schedule, since the pack reshuffles within a handful of laps, but leading the field to green in his home state gives Chastain something to carry into the closing ten races.
The 2027 season opens back here in February. Chastain has ten races to work out what a car capable of qualifying first is missing on Sundays.
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