Qualifying report

Chase Briscoe stars again in NASCAR Cup qualifying with Iowa Speedway pole

Briscoe remains the best qualifier in the Cup Series this year, earning his sixth pole of the 2025 season on Saturday

Since joining Joe Gibbs Racing, Chase Briscoe has earned six poles, as well as three front row starts in the last three races. At Iowa Speedway, his 23.004s was plenty good enough to secure his latest pole position, beating William Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet by 0.084s.

"It's definitely been great on Saturdays for our Bass Pro Shops Toyota," said Briscoe. "Would love to convert that to Sundays. We've been fast on Sundays too, just haven't been able to come out on top yet. James [Small, crew chief] (and) the entire group do such a good job on this thing to get it better ... I did not think that was going to hold. I was just a little too tight. I felt like i gave up a lot of time in (Turn) one and two. I knew my (Turn) three and four were good, but I didn't think it would be enough. Really cool to get another pole."

Briscoe has one win this year at Pocono, but in that race, he qualified sixth. His pole positions include each of the crown jewel events run so far this year, starting first in the Daytona 500, Coca Cola 600, and Brickyard 400 one week ago.

Chase Briscoe, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

Photo by: Chris Graythen - Getty Images

Kyle Larson will start third, Austin Cindric fourth, and Brad Keselowski fifth. Ryan Blaney, Carson Hocevar, Chase Elliott, A.J. Allmendinger, and Justin Haley filled out the remainder of the top ten.

Despite his impressive pole run, Briscoe's closest teammate on the grid will be Denny Hamlin in 11th, while Christopher Bell qualified 17th and Ty Gibbs 20th.

Some notable named starting even deeper in the field include Tyler Reddick in 22nd, Daniel Suarez 26th, Chris Buescher 27th, Ross Chastain 28th, and Ryan Preece 33rd.

Buescher and Preece, who are teammates at RFK Racing, are currently separated by 42 points for the final spot inside the playoffs.

The bumps around the short track proved difficult for several drivers as many struggled to keep their cars under them. Thankfully, there were no incidents. However, that was not the case in practice. Kyle Busch crashed heavily, forcing Richard Childress Racing to pull out the backup car. Because of this, Busch was the only driver who didn't actually take part in qualifying, so he will start 37th (last).