Sammy Smith after winning the Pole for Saturday’s The LiUNA! at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
LAS VEGAS — Sammy Smith scored the pole with a lap of 29.435 seconds for Saturday afternoon’s The LiUNA! at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the NASCAR XFINITY Series.
The pole was Smith’s first since November 2023 at Phoenix Raceway and his first with JR Motorsports.
“It was very high commitment,” Smith said on his pole-winning lap. “Just hat’s off to all these Pilot guys, Phillip (Bell, crew chief) and all the guys did a really good job. We’ve really tried to focus on qualifying these last couple of races, just to try and obviously help our starting position.”
The JR Motorsports Chevrolets were the class of the field on Friday, sweeping the front row with Carson Kvapil starting in second and Connor Zilisch and Justin Allgaier qualifying in third and sixth places respectively.
Samm Smith during his Pole-winning qualifying lap at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
Smith has had the best start points position-wise in his NASCAR XFINITY Series career thus far through four races, currently sitting in fifth place in the driver standings. A big goal though was the win races in every portion of the season in 2025, something Smith believes he has a good shot at this weekend.
“We were solid in practice, I felt like we needed to work on our long run pace just a little bit,” he said. “I think it will be keeping up with the racetrack with rubber, being a little bit hotter and the Cup (Series) cars before. So hopefully, we can keep it up front and we’ll see.”
Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been a solid track for him in the past. Smith has now qualified inside the top 10 in four of his five starts at the track and in his previous four starts has an average running position of 11.9, but just a best finish of eighth, which came in this race a year ago.
This weekend’s race also looks like a great opportunity for JR Motorsports to bounce back after some tough finishes a week ago at Phoenix Raceway after their four cars qualified first, second, third and sixth.
Sammy Smith on track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he won the Pole for The LiUNA! (Photo: Justin Sheldon | The Podium Finish)
“Overall, obviously these guys do a really good job at JRM (JR Motorsports), as a whole right now it’s pretty solid,” he said. “So hopefully, we can keep them (the JRM cars) all up front tomorrow.”
A victory at Las Vegas would be the first for him since winning at Talladega Superspeedway last October to advance to the Round of 8. Although there isn’t as much weight with a win this weekend, a win puts Smith and his No. 8 team on track for their 2025 season goals.
“Just thanks to Pilot, TMC, JRM, Chevrolet, everybody that helped,” said Smith. “The goal tomorrow is to just keep it out front and hopefully we can finish here.”
