Jeremy Clements ran the fastest lap on his first lap of the day. Jesse Love owns every window from 10 to 25 laps and starts tenth. Brent Crews owns the 30-lap column on his first visit. Allgaier was 21st on the pylon and sixth over 30 laps. Corey Day ran the longest run and took the pole by nineteen thousandths. Every car, every window.
Intercepted Audio “ ” Jeremy Clements ran the fastest lap of the day on his first lap of the day, for the second Vegas race in a row. Jesse Love owns every window from 10 laps to 25 and qualified tenth. Brent Crews had never seen the place and owns the 30.
Justin Allgaier was 21st on the pylon with the smallest fall-off of anyone who ran 30 straight. Then qualifying, in the heat, put nine Chase cars and the rookie in the top ten, Corey Day on the pole by nineteen thousandths, and the points leader next to him. By PitByNumbers Staff · Las Vegas Motor Speedway · Saturday, October 3, 2026 · 7:30 PM ET · The CW The session was 50 minutes, one set of tires per car, and the first car out was Jeremy Clements, into sand and dust the booth said sits on this track every time it goes quiet.
He ran 30.00 on that lap. Nobody beat it all afternoon. Brandon Jones, the first Chase car on track, ran 30.32 on his first lap and nobody beat that either.
The contenders who waited, and Justin Allgaier said he waited close to 20 minutes, went out onto a track that was hotter, rubbered and slower, which is why the Chase drivers were strung from second to 22nd on the leaderboard when the session ended and why five of the twelve were inside the top ten. Of the 17 runs of 15 laps or more in the field, every one got slower from its first five laps to its last five. The smallest fall-offs over 30 laps belonged to Allgaier, 1.87 seconds over 33 laps, and Caruth, 1.98 over 30.
The biggest belonged to Jones, 2.48 over 30. Read the board accordingly. The 5 and 10-lap columns are the restart and the first run on stickers.
The 15 through 30-lap columns are the race, with one warning: a 20, 25 or 30-lap window only exists for a car that ran that many laps in a row, and a car that split its one set into two runs, Gray, Kvapil, Love, Hill, shows either a dash or a second-run number on used tires. Love owns 10 through 25 and has no 30. Crews owns the 30 on his first day here.
Day owns the longest run and the pole. Jones is second in five columns. Allgaier is 21st on the pylon and sixth over 30.
Clements is first over 5 and 20th over 10. Then qualifying, one lap each, 36 cars and everybody makes the show, and the START column is what it produced: Day 29.858, Creed 29.877, Jones 29.918, Crews 29.934, Gray 29.986, and the car with the best run pace in the building tenth at 30.386. Nobody.
The track was hot and slick and 35 cars kept it off the fence for 50 minutes and a qualifying lap each, which the booth said is not the normal Vegas Saturday. The damage was mechanical. Jeb Burton’s engine went boom after one lap, the car coasted to a stop and the 27 lost most of the session on pit road before coming back out for 15 green laps.
Anthony Alfredo’s left rear came apart, the outer carcass shredding off the inner liner, and he limped the 96 back around while the tire left the car. William Sawalich had a rear-end leak the broadcast reported at the start of qualifying; he never made a run and starts last. Lee Pulliam had a left-front tire rub before he completed a lap and was warned about the same corner after his qualifying lap.
In qualifying, Brent Crews slid in three and four, twice, and caught it both times on the way to fourth, Matt DiBenedetto took off up the track in one and two and missed the wall by the width of a decal, Carson Kvapil bounced hard enough to drag and smoke through three and four and still ran ninth, and Ryan Sieg slipped in the middle of one and two and paid for it with 20th. The sheet metal is all intact. The question is which of those cars is the same car tonight.
Our O’Reilly card posted before a practice lap turned: Love to win at +550 for 2.0 units, Gray to win at +1200 for 1.0 and top three at +350 for 1.0, Creed top three at +275 for 2.0. Practice graded the first one up and qualifying graded it back down. Love is the best run-pace car in the field, first over 10, 15, 20 and 25 laps, second over 5, and then he qualified tenth on a lap the booth watched expecting more.
The win price was a bet on the car; the car showed up; the grid spot means he spends the first stage passing Chase cars for it. Gray is where he was. The 20-lap column says ninth and lies, because that window came off used tires on his second run; the 15-lap says seventh, two tenths off Love, and the grid says fifth, which is one spot better than the March start that had him fourth at halfway.
Creed is the one practice could not grade, because he never ran more than 12 laps in a row. What he did run was third over 5 and second over 10, tied with Jones in both, and then he qualified second by nineteen thousandths with a file that says 3rd here in March and two wins in three Chase races. The top-three ticket at +275 wanted the front row and got it.
The names practice says we should have priced and did not are Day, Crews, Jones and Caruth, and we will say that out loud: the pole sitter ran the longest run of the day, the rookie owns the 30-lap column on his first visit, Jones is second in five columns from third on the grid, and Caruth is third over 30 from sixth. Allgaier starts seventh with the smallest fall-off of the six cars that ran 30 straight and six wins, and we did not price him either. If you want one number to watch through the first stage, it is where the 2 car is on lap 45.
The full O'Reilly card is posted with the arithmetic on every play, and the Cup card for Sunday lands in the inbox first, at noon. Love has the best long-run car in the field and the tenth-best starting spot. Day has the longest run, the pole and the clean air.
Crews has the 30-lap column and no history here at all. Jones is second in five columns from the second row. Creed has the front row, the points lead, and ten laps of evidence.
Allgaier has 21st on the pylon and the one sheet that got better every time the window got longer. Those six are the race. Caruth and Gray are the two cars whose practice and whose files disagree, in opposite directions: Caruth’s stopwatch says fifth and his file says 19th, Gray’s 20-lap says ninth and his tires say ignore it.
Our money is on Love, Gray and Creed, which is one car that proved it on Saturday and qualified like it did not, one car the format hid, and one car that never ran long enough to be graded. Practice at Las Vegas in September heat is a pylon that remembers the first lap and a stopwatch that remembers the last thirty, and on Saturday the stopwatch said JGR and the 17 are the class of the field, the 2 car is the one to beat over a run, and the 7 car is lying in the weeds with the best tire management of anyone who ran 30 straight. Then the track cooled off two tenths for qualifying and gave the race back to the formula: Chase cars one through ten, except the rookie in fourth.
That is the race.