HAMPTON, Ga. – Ryan Blaney won his first pole position of the season – 11th of his career – Saturday morning at Atlanta Motor Speedway – his two Team Penske teammates, Austin Cindric and Joey Logano also earning front-of-the-field starts for Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 (3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The Penske team – whose three cars combined to lead the most laps in the season-opening DAYTONA 500 a week ago – will take the field to green on the 1.5-mile Atlanta high banks.
Blaney’s lap of 179.371 mph in the No. 12 Team Penske Ford was a slight .002-second faster than Cindric and only .040-second quicker than Wood Brothers Racing driver Josh Berry, in a Penske-affiliated Ford Mustang himself.
“It’s a big testament to our whole group, Team Penske and Wood Brothers to be the top four,” the 31-year old 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Blaney said.
“It just shows you how similar all our cars are being right there together so hope it translates to the race tomorrow in handling and we’ll find out,” he added. “Pretty cool day.”
Fords clearly dominated the qualifying session earning 10 of the first 11 positions on the grid. Logano was fourth fastest, followed by Front Row Motorsport’s Todd Gilliland – one of three FRM cars to advance to the 10-car final qualifying round. His teammates Zane Smith and Noah Gragson were seventh and 10th fastest.
The lone Chevrolet among the top positions was Kyle Busch, whose No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Camaro will roll off sixth. He was runner-up to Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suarez in the closest three-wide finish in series history last year at Atlanta. Suarez will roll off 29th in the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. Blaney was the third driver in that historic trio.
There were only two Toyotas to crack the top-20 in Saturday’s time trials – 23XI Racing teammates Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick, who will start 14th and 18th respectively. The perennial championship-favorite Joe Gibbs Racing team did not fare too well with Chase Briscoe 25th, Christopher Bell 32nd, Ty Gibbs 36th and Denny Hamlin 37th on the 39-car grid.
Despite his promising showing Saturday, Blaney conceded this style of small superspeedway-type racing at Atlanta creates a lot of drama similar to the bigger drafting tracks like Daytona and Talladega, Ala. Meaning anything is possible no matter the grid outlook.
“That’s the start and hopefully it stays that way, but things are going to change during the race,” Blaney acknowledged, “But it’s kind of nice that at least the start of the race through the first stage you can control. It’s not going to be that way the whole race. You’re going to get shuffled at some point and strategy is going to come into play so it’s how do you react to that. But it’s nice to all start together.”
Blaney said there is always a lot of discussion among his team about how to keep the cars together, up front and out of danger.
“Fast cars and teamwork like that is the reason you see all of us leading a bunch of laps and contending for these wins, so it’s nice to be around each other at first but I’d like it to be like that at the end,” he said smiling.
Source: Holly Cain | NASCAR Wire Service
