Carson Hocevar grabs Brickyard 400 pole at Indy

Carson Hocevar won the pole for Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway after posting a fastest lap of 48.232 seconds in Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series qualifying, good for 186.598 mph. Daniel Suarez, Hocevar’s teammate, qualified second at 48.288 seconds, followed by Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs and Denny Hamlin. The Cup Series field for the July 26 race is set at 39 cars.

Kyle Larson qualified 10th in the 39-car lineup, Ryan Blaney was 13th, William Byron 21st, Chase Elliott 27th and Bubba Wallace 29th. NASCAR had split the qualifying order into two groups based on metric scores, with Casey Mears slated to go out first and Denny Hamlin listed last in the order.

Friday practice at Indianapolis was led by Christopher Bell at 49.043 seconds, with John Hunter Nemechek second and Ty Gibbs third. Erik Jones was fourth, and Hamlin, Larson, Hocevar, Reddick and Blaney completed the top 10. Austin Cindric, Wallace and Ryan Preece had problems during the session. The Brickyard 400 is scheduled for Sunday at 2:00 p.m. ET on TNT Sports and HBO Max, with stages set for 50, 100 and 160 laps and a listed purse of $11,233,037.