Kyle Busch’s quest for a Daytona 500 win will start from the pole position Sunday.
Busch earned the top spot in front row qualifying for the Daytona 500 on Wednesday night with a lap of 183.925 mph in the second round of qualifying. Busch’s lap usurped Chase Briscoe from the top spot in the final round. Briscoe started last year’s Daytona 500 on the pole.
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Sunday will mark Busch’s 21st start in the Daytona 500 as he chases his first win in NASCAR’s biggest race. His winless streak is longer than any other active driver’s and is even longer than Dale Earnhardt’s. The seven-time champion won the 1998 Daytona 500 in his 20th start.
Earnhardt won that race while driving for Richard Childress Racing, the same team that Busch represents. The 2026 season is Busch’s fourth with RCR after moving over from Joe Gibbs Racing. And Busch is looking to recapture the form he had with JGR.
Busch, 40, has 63 Cup Series wins across 750 starts. But he hasn’t won in each of the last two seasons after scoring three wins in his first season with RCR in 2023.
At JGR, Busch won the 2015 and 2019 Cup Series titles as he won 40 races in the 2010s. Busch missed the Daytona 500 in 2015 after suffering a broken leg in the Xfinity Series race the day before. But he returned after missing 11 races and went on to win five of the remaining 25 races that season to win his first title.
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Daytona has not been terribly kind to Busch in the Cup Series, either. Across 41 starts, Busch has just one win and 13 top-10 finishes. That win came in the 2008 summer race and just five of his top 10s at the track have come in the Daytona 500.
Wednesday night’s qualifying session only locked in the top two starting spots for the Daytona 500 and determined which two non-chartered teams would make the race. Corey Heim, driving a fourth car for Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing, was the fastest driver in a non-chartered entry and he’s locked into the race. So is Justin Allgaier. He posted the second-fastest time among open teams while driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports.
With Jimmie Johnson also guaranteed to be part of the 41-driver field, thanks to a NASCAR provisional, six drivers are competing for the final two spots in the Daytona 500 in Thursday night’s Duel races.
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The highest finisher among Corey LaJoie, Chandler Smith and Casey Mears in the first Duel race will make the 500 while the best finishing driver among Anthony Alfredo, BJ McLeod and JJ Yeley will make the race from the second Duel.
Here are the lineups for each of the two qualifying races on Thursday night. The first race will set the inside row and the odd-numbered starting positions while the second race will set the outside row and the even-numbered starting spots.
Duel 1
1. Kyle Busch
2. Ryan Preece
3. Corey Heim
4. Alex Bowman
5. Chris Buescher
6. Joey Logano
7. Austin Dillon
8. Corey LaJoie
9. John Hunter Nemechek
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10. Brad Keselowski
11. Ryan Blaney
12. William Byron
13. Cole Custer
14. Cody Ware
15. Jimmie Johnson
16. Bubba Wallace
17. AJ Allmendinger
18. Ross Chastain
19. Shane van Gisbergen
20. Daniel Suarez
21. Chandler Smith
22. Casey Mears
23. Noah Gragson
Duel 2
1. Chase Briscoe
2. Denny Hamlin
3. Kyle Larson
4. Chase Elliott
5. Ty Gibbs
6. Christopher Bell
7. Justin Allgaier
8. Austin Cindric
9. Zane Smith
10. Michael McDowell
11. Connor Zilisch
12. Erik Jones
13. Josh Berry
14. Carson Hocevar
15. Riley Herbst
16. Todd Gilliland
17. Anthony Alfredo
18. Ty Dillon
19. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
20. Tyler Reddick
21. BJ McLeod
22. JJ Yeley
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