Chase Briscoe’s done it again.
One week after claiming the pole for the Brickyard 400, Briscoe laid down a quick lap of 136.933mph (23.093s) to take the top spot again for the Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway.
The result is Briscoe’s sixth pole of the 2025 season, triple the two he had in four seasons before arriving at Joe Gibbs Racing. He’ll hope continuing that trend won’t lead to a repeat of his race results on Sunday. Briscoe has yet to take a win from any of his pole runs this season.
“It’s definitely been great on Saturdays for our Bass Pro Shops Toyota,” Briscoe said. “I would love to convert that to Sundays. We’ve been fast on Sundays, too – just haven’t been able to come out on top.”
After a Toyota-led practice, qualifying saw contenders from all three manufacturers. William Byron was second for Chevrolet with a speed of 136.435mph. His Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson followed in third at 136.429mph.
Ford drivers took the next three spots, led by Austin Cindric (136.358mph). Brad Keselowski (136.252mph) completed the top five, with inaugural race winner Ryan Blaney (136.063mph) coming home sixth.
From there, it was all Chevrolet. Carson Hocever (136.016mph), Chase Elliott (135.981mph), AJ Allmendinger (135.928mph) and Justin Haley (135.788mph) wrapped up the top 10. Regular season championship contender Denny Hamlin slotted in 11th.
It was a tight session, with 0.629s separating 35 of the 37 potential qualifiers. Garage 66’s Joey Gase was 2.169s off in 36th. Kyle Busch failed to complete a lap after crashing hard during the preceding practice session. His Richard Childress Racing team will roll out a backup car for Sunday’s race.
With the field so close together, small mistakes carried big consequences. Playoff bubble driver Chris Buescher was a distant 27th at session’s end. Thankfully for him, the driver he’s racing for the final playoff spot – RFK Racing teammate Ryan Preece – was even worse in 33rd.
The driver Buescher is chasing should another winner move the cutline up, Alex Bowman, qualified 16th.
No accidents during the session, though Keselowski lost the nose of his No. 6 and had to chase his car up the track during his run, but managed to make the save.
