Top-5 Watchers for Homestead-Miami

By: Tom Luttermoser

After qualifying on Saturday, William Byron sits on the Pole for the first time this season with bottom seed Christopher Bell sitting outside Pole. We also saw a lot of speed from the Toyota camp with all 6 Toyotas in the Top-15 and 3 in the Top-10. Keeping with Toyota, for the first time in their short history, 23XI has both of their cars qualifying in the Top-10 (both with reserve drivers).

With the story lines after qualifying, these are the 5 drivers/teams to keep an eye out for;

5.) Chase Elliott - After not showing up to race at Las Vegas, the 9 team showed a tremendous amount of speed running P.2 in practice and ending up P.3 in qualifying. Elliott only has 2 Top-5s at NASCAR's southernmost race track so he doesn't have a spectacular record there. But with the speed and the new race car, that could be broken Sunday.

4.) Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing - Talk about a comeback story. Brad Keselowski came to Roush to rebuild the team as a Co-Owner this season and they have done just that. Leading laps, contending for wins and even scoring their first win since 2017, BKR has come alive in the second half of this season. Here at Homestead, both Brad and Chris qualified in the Top-10... 8th and 9th. They have been fast later in the season, don't count either of them out.

3.) 23XI Racing - Even with 2 fill in drivers, both of the 23XI cars raced their way into the Top-10 in qualifying, Gibbs 6th and Nemechek 4th. This should be no surprise as both of their Full-time drivers found victory lane this season. Nemechek hasn't been in a Cup Series car since 2020 and this weekend's practice were his first time in the NEXT-GEN car. Keep an eye out on that 45 car.

2.) Christoher Bell - After being take out early last week at Las Vegas, Bell fell to 23 points behind the cut line. But this weekend in qualifying, Bell held the pole until the last moments when it was taken over by Byron. He isn't in a must win position, but why let yourself get there at all? Go win. 

1.) William Byron - Byron is the most recent Homestead winner, but you have to go to an out of date car and a whole other season to get to that point. He comes into this race on the Pole and he  took the pole from Christopher Bell by .049 seconds.