NASCAR O’Reilly Series Qualifying: Who Won Pole for Championship Race?

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Who won the pole for today's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series championship race? Get the qualifying results, pole winner and starting lineup at Homestead-Miami.

Sheldon Creed will lead the field to the green flag Saturday in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway after winning the pole position in qualifying.

Creed turned a lap of 33.578 seconds at 160.820 mph in his No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet, edging Austin Hill by 0.039 seconds. It is his sixth career pole in the series, and it comes in his final start with the team.

Qualifying itself, run one car at a time in the early afternoon, ran cleanly with no reported accidents, spins or major mechanical problems. The same could not be said for Friday’s practice, when a tire problem and a brush with the wall briefly interrupted the weekend’s preparation.

Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed Grabs the Pole

Practice produced the weekend’s only real trouble. Jesse Love stalled on the backstretch after a left-rear tire problem entering Turn 1, which brought out a brief stoppage. Corey Day also lightly scraped the wall while testing the high line. Creed was fifth-fastest in that session.

Both drivers recovered in time to post strong qualifying runs. Hill took second at 33.617 seconds and 160.633 mph, with Carson Kvapil third at 33.632 and Love fourth at 33.649. Day qualified seventh. Brent Crews starts fifth and Parker Retzlaff sixth, while Brandon Jones, William Sawalich and Nicholas Sanchez complete the top 10 starters in eighth, ninth and 10th. Points leader Justin Allgaier starts 11th.

Allgaier will have to work through traffic early, with Kvapil, Love and Day all lined up in front of him. The top 10 starters are separated by just 0.209 seconds, from Creed’s 33.578 to Sanchez’s 33.787.

Sheldon Creed’s Title Chances After Taking the Pole

The finale is a pure points race, and Allgaier leads Love by 22 points. Day trails by 23, Kvapil by 31 and Creed by 42. Sam Mayer sits sixth, 97 points back, with the rest of the 12-driver Chase field further behind. Creed’s 42-point deficit is the largest among the top five, while Love, Kvapil and Day all start in the top seven and remain within reach of the lead.

Creed led the Chase earlier in the postseason before an ignition problem at Phoenix dropped him to 32nd, two laps down. Pole position gives him clean air and early track position on a 1.5-mile oval, but to win the title he needs a win with stage points and maximum bonus points while the four drivers ahead of him finish poorly or run into trouble.

The 200-lap, 300-mile race, split into stages of 45, 90 and 200 laps, is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. ET. Viewers can watch on The CW Network, with streaming available on the ESPN App through ESPN Unlimited and on The CW App, which also offers in-car cameras. Live-TV services including DirecTV Stream, fuboTV, Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV carry the broadcast as well. Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio handle the radio call.

Creed showed speed all weekend, going from fifth in practice to first in qualifying, and he now gets one last race in the No. 00 car. Stage points at laps 45 and 90 can reshuffle the standings before the final run to the checkered flag. Creed starts first. The 200 laps ahead will settle whether that is enough to move him up from fifth to taking the ultimate prize.

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