Carson Hocevar takes Brickyard 400 pole at Indianapolis
NXTbets Pro | Published On: July 25, 2026
Hocevar pole
Carson Hocevar put his name at the front of the Brickyard 400 field and will lead the way to the green flag at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He earned the pole in Cup Series qualifying and posted the quickest lap of the session, a 48.232-second run that translated to 186.598 mph. That lap gave Hocevar the top starting spot for Sunday’s race and set the pace in a 39-car field at one of NASCAR’s biggest stops of the season. The result came in a session where every lap carried weight, and Hocevar delivered the fastest one when it counted.
Daniel Suarez lined up second after turning a 48.288-second lap, a close follow-up that kept him near the front of the grid. Tyler Reddick took third, Ty Gibbs was fourth and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five. Those five names set the early shape of the Brickyard 400 lineup, with Hocevar out front and a mix of experienced Cup drivers and young contenders right behind him. The pole also put Hocevar in the clearest position on the track for the start, with the field stacked behind him at Indianapolis.
The top of the grid reflected a short, fast qualifying run with little room for mistakes. Hocevar’s lap stood as the standard while the rest of the front runners tried to match it, and the final order showed how tight the battle was near the top. Suarez was the closest challenger in second, then Reddick, Gibbs and Hamlin filled out the first five rows of the story. In a race built around Indianapolis Motor Speedway, that front-end speed matters because it shapes how the opening part of the Brickyard 400 will begin. Hocevar took the pole and secured the best launch point in the field.
Indianapolis lineup
NASCAR set the qualifying order for Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway ahead of Sunday’s Brickyard 400 and split the 39-car field into two groups based on metric scores. Casey Mears was scheduled to go out first, which put him at the head of the order when qualifying began. Denny Hamlin had the final spot in the running order, giving him the last chance among the listed drivers to put down a lap in the session. The format created a clean structure for the field and gave each group a defined place in the sequence before the cars took the track.
The lineup that came out of qualifying spread the field across the grid and gave several familiar names spots in different parts of the order. Kyle Larson qualified 10th, which put him inside the top 10 but outside the front row fight. Ryan Blaney came in 13th, a solid midfront position in the 39-car lineup. William Byron qualified 21st, Chase Elliott was 27th and Bubba Wallace qualified 29th. Those results left Hocevar, Suarez, Reddick, Gibbs and Hamlin at the sharp end of the field while a cluster of major names lined up deeper in the order.
The 39-car field gives the race a full grid from front to back, and the qualifying sheet made the distribution clear before the Brickyard 400 begins. Hocevar’s pole sits at the top of the list, but the rest of the order matters just as much for how the race opens and how the early laps unfold. Larson’s 10th-place starting spot, Blaney’s 13th, Byron’s 21st, Elliott’s 27th and Wallace’s 29th all show how wide the spread became by the end of the session. NASCAR’s metric-based grouping determined the order before qualifying, and the final results locked in the starting positions for one of the season’s marquee races at Indianapolis.
