NASCAR Cup Series
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Brickyard 400
Team Chevy Post-Qualifying Report
July 25, 2026
Hocevar, Suarez Sweeps Front Row for the 2026 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway
TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL TOP-10 STARTING LINEUP:
1st – Carson Hocevar
2nd – Daniel Suarez
6th – Michael McDowell
8th – Alex Bowman
9th – AJ Allmendinger
10th – Kyle Larson
- In just his third career NASCAR Cup Series start at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar will lead the field to the green flag from the pole position for the 2026 Brickyard 400. The pole – Chevrolet’s fifth of the season and 11th all-time in NASCAR’s premier series at Indianapolis Motor Speedway – came after the Michigan native laid down a lap of 48.232 seconds, at 186.598 mph, around the famed 2.5-mile Indiana oval.
- With a qualifying lap of 48.288 seconds in his No. 7 Chevrolet, Daniel Suarez landed second on the speed chart to give the Spire Motorsports pairing a front row sweep for the second time this season – an effort also accomplished by the teammates at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this season.
- Saturday’s qualifying session for NASCAR’s premier series ended with Chevrolet earning the highest representation in the top-10 of the starting lineup for the crown jewel event. Michael McDowell posted a sixth-place qualifying effort to give all three Spire Motorsports entries a starting position within the top-10. Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson were eighth and 10th, respectively, with Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger in ninth.
Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet – Pole Win Quotes
Carson, if you win tomorrow’s Brickyard 400, how are you going to top that Talladega celebration?
“I don’t know. I don’t think the track is longer, but the grandstands are a little longer, so I could find plenty of other stuff to do. But I don’t know… I think it will just kind of come to me. I don’t want to say it out loud because I think Roger Penske would kill me if he knew some of the ideas I had. But also, too, there’s tradition here, so you’ve got to really watch yourself a little bit. But yeah, they were getting pumped up after qualifying, so I can’t imagine how loud they would be if we do win.”
With you being on the pole, some of the guys that are in the rear of the field, do you think they’re going to have to do some fuel strategy or flipping the stage and all that to kind of stay up with the lack of passing in this race?
“Yeah, I’m sure they will. It’s a really good thing that they pay my crew guys a lot of money to figure that out for me. If I had to do more than just drive the car around in circles, we would all be screwed (laughs). Luckily, they’ve got really smart guys to know what the guys behind us are doing and the guys around us from a fuel strategy and pit strategy standpoint. I feel like it’s a lot easier to stay up front than get up front, especially on the fuel side of it. You’ve got to take your lumps at some point. Ultimately, hopefully, pit stall one helps, too.”
What is the significance of having a pole win here at a place like this for the Brickyard 400?
“Yeah, it’s just cool for me to get anything here (at Indianapolis Motor Speedway). If I was 20 years into my career and I hadn’t won anything in Indy, I’d look into a marathon or something, just so I could get an award here. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just really cool to get something here. I get to look out at the backstretch behind this media center here and there’s a parking lot with a bunch of rubber. That’s where I grew up racing quarter midgets. I have a few bricks from that, and now, I can cherish a pole award at least on my third time here. Hopefully, that can give us a good advantage for tomorrow. Anything here is super important, just because the prestige of this place really raises everybody’s intensity. Everybody’s trying here, if not a little bit more, because they know how much it means to everybody. Yeah, it’s super cool.”
With you going off to all these galas and big events, do you need poles and wins more than others just to say, ‘OK, yes, I’m doing these things, but I’m also performing’?
“Yeah, well, the fuel for the jets to all these places isn’t cheap, as well as the dirt late model stuff we run and everything. We’ve got to sell a lot of t-shirts, and people buy t-shirts for winners and pole award winners. The more t-shirts we can sell, the more cool galas, fun dirt races and stuff we can go to. My boss, Jeff (Dickerson), isn’t getting questioned of why we’re spending money.
But yeah, a pole award hopefully helps. I was in a dirt race a few days ago. It has no translation to Indianapolis Motor Speedway qualifying, but now I can sit here and say ‘yeah, I need to be in more dirt late model races because obviously it works’. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to use.”
You’ve been really stacking up just small victories here, one thing after another. You’re clearly not an overnight success, but if we could use that with you this year, it seems like you’ve been an overnight success. Is there a certain driver that maybe you aspired to be like when you were growing up, that you just kind of emulate where you’re at in your career now, or is this just part of the plan?
“Yeah, I was a massive Dale Jr. fan. I just get to have fun doing and racing how I want to race. All these guys are guys I couldn’t have predicted racing with, and them allowing me to prep how I want to prep, race how I want to race, say and do the things I want to say, and spend my off days doing what I want to do. I feel like it’s a unique situation that I’m in, but I feel like if you were sitting here and asked the same question, I think they’d be like, he’s a pretty unique driver too, I guess. So, I guess it’s mutual.”
You posted earlier this week the prototype of your first win diecast car from Talladega. I guess you knew that was coming, the afterglow and the after effects of getting that win, but what is it like to actually see that become a reality?
“It’s super cool for me to see that car with all the markings. I still remember it super vividly. It’s just fun that the real life car has been assembled and re-ran. But for me, I get to almost relive it with the diecast a little bit and get to see all the details they put into it. It’s almost as if they get to roll the car back into a showroom. Maybe 15 years ago with the old car, they could have rolled that over and retired that car. But with the Next Gen car, you’re like, ‘okay, cool, it’s Talladega, all right, we’re going to line this thing up for Richmond or something’. It just runs everywhere with these cars.”
How did the track today feel to you all the way around?
“It felt good to me. It felt smooth. Somebody asked me what I thought about the racetrack with bumps, and I was like, yeah, I didn’t even know there were bumps. I just love running around this track. I could do it all day long.”
What is your favorite Brickyard 400 that you’ve watched or seen?
“Man, honestly, it’s not a race. The one I always loved watching was the tire test from, I believe, 1992. The first tire test before they put the grass in. I love watching that because they’re running on the apron, so the second lane actually has more banking. They’re running the top, and the guys on the bottom are getting loose. And then, I believe they tested in ‘93 and then raced ‘94. They retested in ‘93 with the grass and stuff, and it was a lot more single file. It’s really funny for me to hear Rusty Wallace and AJ Foyt complain about dirty air. So I was like, ah, hell, you look at Twitter, that wasn’t a thing. You know, in the 1990s, there was no such thing. So it was really funny to hear that in ’93. There were some races here and there that the finish was cool, but Dale Jr. never really ran great here, so I was like, I’ll just stick to watching the Indy 500. I loved watching the 500, obviously. But from the Cup side, I was just watching the ’92 tire test and all the old footage.”
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