NASCAR at COTA qualifying results, starting lineup: William Byron wins pole for second year in a row

Byron's pole is his second-straight at Circuit of the Americas and his first of the 2024 season

By Steven Taranto

Mar 23, 2024 at 1:29 pm ET • 2 min read

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William Byron won the pole for the Echopark Texas Grand Prix in qualifying on Saturday morning, posting a lap of 129.635 (94.696 MPH) in the final round to earn his first pole of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season and his second-straight pole at Circuit of the Americas. Byron's pole is also the fifth of his career on a road course, meaning that road course poles now account for nearly half of his 13 career Cup poles, and his time in Group A qualifying (129.114) also set a new track record.

Byron set his fast mark early in the final round of qualifying, then held on in the final minutes as defending COTA winner Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs both made jousts at the pole. Gibbs looked to be on pace to knock Byron off the pole coming to the conclusion of his final lap, but he missed out on what would have been his first Cup pole after cracking the throttle at the very end of his lap. That error by Gibbs would end up separating him and Byron by just .015.

Byron was joined in the top five by a fellow Chevrolet in Corey LaJoie, who earned his best-career starting spot with a fifth-place qualifying run. LaJoie made it to the final round of qualifying by virtue of narrowly beating out Shane Van Gisbergen, last year's winner at the Chicago Street Course, for the last spot above the cut line in Group A qualifying. LaJoie's best career starting spot also marks the best qualifying effort in team history for Spire Motorsports.

Van Gisbergen would end up qualifying 12th, leading a group of road course specialists that includes A.J. Allmendinger in 14th and Kamui Kobayashi in 25th.