From the starting grid to the race result: Las Vegas shows how deceptive a strong qualifying can be

Bobby Travis · NASCAR/IndyCar correspondent

Joe Gibbs Racing occupied the top four starting positions in qualifying, but only Chase Briscoe converted that into a victory. For many in the field, the story between starting position and the checkered flag was quite different.

At the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the fifth of ten Chase races in the Cup Series, Chase Briscoe won decisively on Sunday ahead of Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick. Yet anyone who only reads about this weekend through those three names misses the real story: Between Saturday morning’s practice session, Joe Gibbs Racing’s dominant qualifying, and Sunday evening’s race result, entire worlds separated several drivers, and it is precisely this shift that tells us more about the state of the Chase than the pure result at the top.

JGR locks up the first four grid positions, but only Briscoe capitalizes

In Saturday’s qualifying, Joe Gibbs Racing with Hamlin, Ty Gibbs, Bell and Briscoe indeed completely filled the first two rows, for the first time in team history. That only a single victory came from this on Sunday shows how little a dominant starting position is actually worth over 267 laps on the 1.5-mile tri-oval once the race unfolds.

Hamlin, starting from pole position, spun in lap 78 without outside contact, then drove with a damaged splitter and battled fuel pressure issues in the final race segment. In the end, he could only manage 16th place. His two teammates from second and third were hit even harder: Ty Gibbs, penalized for excessive speed in the pits from second position, could only reach 17th place, Christopher Bell dropped with power steering problems from third position all the way to 23rd place, falling a lap down in the process. Only Briscoe, starting from fourth, actually converted his qualifying form into race pace, led 175 of 267 laps and won decisively in the end.

The gainers: Blaney, van Gisbergen and Logano fish their way to strong finishes

While three of four JGR starters collapsed, others exploited the tight field behind the front group for a real leap forward. Ryan Blaney started from 20th and finished fifth, a gain of 15 positions that catapulted him right into the top-five point distribution. Shane van Gisbergen moved up from 25th to ninth place, Joey Logano climbed from 23rd to tenth.

Even more impressive was Noah Gragson’s jump, who after a tire puncture in practice went without a qualifying time and worked his way from dead last, starting position 36, up to 20th place. Austin Hill managed 22nd from starting position 33. Both cases show that tight traffic and restarts on a mid-track oval like Las Vegas over the full distance can certainly still be made up from far back in the field.

The fallers: strong starting positions, disappointing midfield results

On the other side of the ledger, several drivers who had positioned themselves well in qualifying dropped significantly. Ryan Preece fell from 12th place to 28th, two laps down. Ross Chastain, starting from 17th, could only reach 30th place, also two laps back. Brad Keselowski also lost eight positions from 16th on the grid and landed in 24th.

In the midfield, the field largely remained within expectations: Austin Cindric converted seventh place into fourth, William Byron drove from eighth to sixth place, Bubba Wallace confirmed ninth place with eighth at the finish. For this group, which neither climbed spectacularly nor collapsed, the weekend was simply solid, which also holds value in a tight Chase.

What the weekend means for the championship

In the overall standings, Kyle Larson continues to lead after this fifth of ten Chase races with 2318 points ahead of Denny Hamlin with 2278 and Christopher Bell with 2263 points. Only 55 points separate the top three, just 110 points lie between Larson and Ty Gibbs in eighth. Particularly Bell and Ty Gibbs, who both converted a strong qualifying into a disappointing race result, must be careful that such weekends do not repeat themselves in the decisive Chase phase.

Briscoe, on the other hand, with his second season victory not only took home the full 75 points, but also worked his way past Ty Gibbs and Reddick in the overall standings from eighth to sixth, just four points behind Blaney. With five remaining Chase races to go, the field at the top remains so tightly bunched together that a weekend like this one in Las Vegas, with its major shifts between starting position and checkered flag, seems almost programmatic for the decisive phase of the season.