Blaney Leads Penske Domination Of Atlanta Cup Qualifying

Ryan Blaney celebrates the Busch Light Pole Award at Atlanta Motor Speedway. (Max Corcoran/Race Face Digital photo)

HAMPTON, Ga. – Team Penske’s strong superspeedway pace continued to Atlanta Motor Speedway Saturday morning, as the organization locked out the front row in qualifying for the Ambetter Health 400.

Less than a week after the Penske trio of Ford Mustang Dark Horses combined to lead more than 60 percent of the Daytona 500, Ryan Blaney led the team to its first Busch Light Pole Award of the NASCAR Cup Series season, barely nipping teammate Austin Cindric in the second and final knockout round.

Blaney’s pole-winning time of 30.908 seconds (179.371 mph) was a scant .002 seconds better than Cindric’s final-round lap, giving the 2023 Cup Series champion his 11th career pole and first on a drafting track.

“Really cool effort by the whole (No.) 12 team,” said Blaney after his qualifying run. “The Bodyarmor Zero Sugar Mustang was good. It drove great. To get the 2 (Cindric) by that slim a margin is super close and shows the speed in all the Penske cars.

“Everyone back home and here at the racetrack put in some amazing effort to start our week off right, and hopefully this carries into [Sunday] and they drive well in the draft,” he continued. “It seems like we have a pretty decent handle on this place (as a team), but you still never know going into a race.

“Cool day today and looking forward to staying up there tomorrow.”

In fact, Penske-prepared entries swept the top four starting spots for Sunday’s race at Atlanta, with Josh Berry putting the satellite Wood Brothers No. 21 third and Logano landing fourth in the pole shootout after leading the first round of qualifying.

“For the four cars that come out of our race shop to be the top four cars in the field (in qualifying), you can’t ask for more than that,” noted outside polesitter Cindric. “There are so many Fords up inside the top 10; that bodes well for us to work together … but I would have loved to have gotten the pole. I can’t tell you how many front-row starting spots I’ve had at these types of tracks (superspeedways), but it means we’ve had a lot of fast cars right off the truck.

“Good repeatability for us between the rounds … but today was the speed piece and tomorrow is when the handling piece comes into play.”

Front Row Motorsports’ Todd Gilliland starts fifth Sunday, with Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch rolling from the outside of the third row in sixth as the only Chevrolet driver to make the pole round.

Zane Smith, the RFK Racing pair of Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski, and Noah Gragson closed out the top 10 among the drivers that made it through both rounds of knockout qualifying.

Ford’s domination of time trials extended to the first man below the cut line to advance out of round one, as RFK’s Ryan Preece ended up 11th (31.109/178.212), just .034 seconds off his teammate Buescher.

Other notables lining up deeper in the starting lineup include Alex Bowman (13th); Bubba Wallace, who was the fastest Toyota driver in 14th; Daytona 500 winner William Byron (16th); home-state favorite Chase Elliott (19th), Chase Briscoe (25th), rookie Shane van Gisbergen (30th), and Denny Hamlin (37th).

With just three non-chartered entries on the property in addition to the 36 chartered cars, no drivers failed to qualify.

Broadcast coverage of Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta is slated for a 3 p.m. ET start, live on FOX, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.