Michael McDowell earns Spire Motorsports its first-ever NASCAR Cup pole at Las Vegas

Michael McDowell earned a series-leading six pole positions during the 2024 season as a Front Row Motorsports driver before joining Spire Motorsports for the new season. Well, it didn't take long for him to return to his pole-winning ways. It certainly makes sense as his FRM crew chief Travis Peterson followed him over to Spire as well.

The veteran driver was the 14th driver to take time at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and immediately rocketed to the top of the qualifying with a 28.883s lap. No one was able to eclipse him with four-time Las Vegas winner Joey Logano getting the closest, but still 0.015s adrift of the pole.

Spire keeps improving

Just so proud of all the men and women at Spire Motorsports," said McDowell, who now has seven career poles. "To have this much speed and sit on the pole is just a testament to all of the hard work of everybody at Spire. Really proud. It gives us great pit stall selection, great opportunity to lead some laps and get some stage points and put ourselves into position tomorrow."

He later added: "This Chevy was really fast. No matter what, when you're running wide open at Vegas, it's scary, man. It really is. I know it doesn't look like much, but it's pretty wild out there."

This stunning pole result for Spire comes one week after they put all three of their cars into the top-ten on the starting grid at Phoenix. Previously, the team's best qualifying effort came in the 2024 Southern 500 at Darlington when Carson Hocevar qualified second.

Watch: Michael McDowell scores Spire's first pole at Las Vegas

The rest of the pack

Logano's Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric was third while Kyle Busch qualified fourth and Erik Jones fifth. Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, William Byron, Zane Smith, and Kyle Larson rounded out the top-ten.

As he goes for a historic fourth-consecutive Cup Series victory (a feat not seen since 2007), Christopher Bell leads all Joe Gibbs Racing drivers but that only put him 13th on the grid. He will also go to the rear of the field due to a throttle body change, making his mission for Sunday that much harder.

Ross Chastain, who won practice and led every lap-average category, was not able to translate it to qualifying. A wobble out of Turn 4 cost him dearly but the Trackhouse driver was able to hang onto the race car, qualifying 19th.

Ryan Blaney did not actually take part in qualifying due to a crash during practice earlier in the day. He will not go to a backup car as the team is repairing his primary No. 12 Ford Mustang.

Watch: Ryan Blaney crashes early during Cup Series practice