By AMANDA VINCENT
Just call Ryan Blaney the “Pole Man.” With a 22.541-second/119.782 mph lap in the second and final round of NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Richmond (Va.) Raceway on Saturday, Blaney claimed the pole for Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400. The pole is Blaney’s third in the first seven races of the season, his third-straight in races for which traditional qualifying sessions were held.
“I will say it’s definitely not been my best place at all,” Blaney said of Richmond. “I struggled here really bad for years, and I still don’t feel like I’m great here at all, or let alone very good. We’ve worked really hard on figuring out what to do better here, from myself to how we kind of unload with the car to be more competitive in the race, and that’s been year’s in progress of me, just trying to figure out what the heck I need to do. I feel like everyone has done a really good job to bring a fast car. Qualifying on the pole here is one thing. Racing here is a completely other thing. It’s great we got the pole, but now it’s time to switch to race mode and, ‘Okay, what do we have to do to be able to hold on in the race?’ The new car is a little bit different here driving-wise. It’s kind of a fresh start for me having a new car here at this place and just working really hard with everybody at Penske on the 12 team to figure out, ‘Okay, what do I need to do to just get more competitive here.’ Even though it’s not in the playoffs this year, you don’t want to run bad anywhere. You need to be able to adapt to different racetracks, so just a fast car and a lot of hard work.”
Blaney also was fastest among drivers in group one in the first round of qualifying with a 22.432-second/120.364 mph lap.
The top-five qualifiers all came from group one. William Byron qualified second to share the front row of Sunday’s starting grid with Blaney.
Kyle Busch qualified third after posting the fastest lap in practice.
Chase Briscoe and Erik Jones qualified fourth and fifth. Advancing to the final round of qualifying from group two and qualifying sixth through 10th were Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell and Aric Almirola.
Chastain was fastest among drivers in group two during the opening round.
Justin Haley and Greg Biffle were sidelined for qualifying after their cars failed inspection three times. As a result, they’ll start in the back Sunday and serve pass-through penalties at the start of the race. They also each lost a crew member. Haley’s car chief Jason Antley, and an engineer on Biffle’s team, Nick Ollila, were ejected.
Five other drivers lost car chiefs to ejections because of two inspection failures — Austin Dillon, A.J. Allmendinger, Chris Buescher, Darrell “Bubba” Wallace and Ricky Stenhuse Jr.
Below is the starting grid for the Toyota Owners 400:
