Austin Cindric will start on the second row for today’s NASCAR Cup Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway after a week of celebrating a win at Talladega and a lot of attention paid to an expletive-laden radio rant directed toward him by his own teammate during Team Penske’s first win of the season.

There also was the conversation with Joey Logano, who was furious midway through the race when he didn’t get the help he needed in his Ford from Cindric, which allowed rival Toyota driver Bubba Wallace to win the second stage and earn valuable bonus points.

“Definitely needed, right? I mean, I think you’ve got to talk about that. You’ve got to talk about what happened on track. I think that’s a lot more of the substance of the conversation,” Cindric said Saturday.

“I feel like I’ve got pretty thick skin, and I also feel like I know Joey fairly well, so I’m not overly concerned or have too many emotions at all about what was said,” he said. “But I think for us, sorting out where we both stood on track and what we can do in the future to be better there and capitalize on those opportunities.”

They are back on the track Sunday at Texas, the 1 1/2-mile track where Cindric qualified third for the 11th Cup race this season.

“All good for me, man,” Cindric said when asked if the teammates were good.

Carson Hocevar earned his first Cup pole with a qualifying lap of 191.659 mph in the Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. The 22-year-old Hocevar is the youngest pole winner ever at Texas Motor Speedway, which will host its 45th Cup race. His 56th career Cup race will start on the front row with Cup points leader William Byron (191.564 mph), also in a Chevy.

Cindric ran a qualifying lap of 191.523 mph. Logano will start 27th, two spots ahead of defending race champion Chase Elliott.

Logano said this week that he probably “spouted off” more than he should have against his teammate during the Talladega race, and that it came in the heat of the moment.

Xfinity Series

Former NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson received a call midweek, asking him to drive in place of Connor Zilisch, who suffered a back injury in last week’s race, in the JR Motorsports No. 88 in the Andy’s Frozen Custard 300 at Texas Motor Speedway.

That proved to be a winning call.

Larson took the lead from defending race winner Sam Mayer in the second overtime and pulled away to win by 1.265 seconds over Taylor Gray for his second series win of the year.

The race was plagued by 11 yellow caution flags.

“There was a lot of survival throughout that race, dodging some wrecks, balance we had to work on quite a bit,” Larson told reporters. “It was fun, I felt like my car, if I could ever get to the lead, I could stretch out. I just couldn’t get by Justin; he was doing a good job of running where I needed to be.”

Riley Herebst was third, followed by Austin Hill and Mayer.

Formula One

Max Verstappen celebrated the birth of his first child with a pole-winning run at the Miami Grand Prix.

The four-time defending Formula 1 champion edged Lando Norris of McLaren by .065 seconds to take the top starting spot for today’s race. It was a rebound for Verstappen, who was penalized earlier Saturday in the sprint race and finished 17th.

“It’s been a great qualifying, it worked out well and I’m very happy to be on pole,” Verstappen said of his 43rd career pole. It is his third pole through six races this season and second consecutive.

It wasn’t the result Norris hoped for from F1’s newest father. There’s a myth that having children can slow drivers because they suddenly become a bit more conservative. Verstappen and his partner, Kelly Piquet, announced the birth of a baby girl on Friday.

“Nod to Max, especially being a dad now,” Norris said. “I was hoping it was going to slow him down a little bit, but it clearly didn’t.”

Verstappen agreed.

“Clearly it didn’t make me slower, being a dad. We can throw that out the window for people mentioning it,” he said.

Norris beat teammate Oscar Piastri to win the sprint race.

The 18-lap sprint was eventful even before it started as heavy rain drenched the course and Charles Leclerc crashed in the wet conditions driving his Ferrari out to the grid for the start of the race. He wasn’t able to compete in the sprint as Ferrari worked to repair his car in time for qualifying.

The start of the race was then delayed because drivers said the rain made conditions too dangerous and visibility was a concern. And when it finally went green, with 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli leading the standing start as the youngest pole-winner in F1 history, his time out front was brief. Piastri beat the Mercedes driver into the first turn and Antonelli drove off the track and slipped to fourth.