By David Morgan, Associate Editor
HAMPTON, Ga. – It’s been a familiar sight to see a Blue Oval at the top of the board in qualifying at EchoPark Speedway and that streak continued in NASCAR Cup Series time trials on Saturday as Ryan Blaney put his No. 12 Team Penske Ford on the pole.
It marks the seventh straight pole for the Fords dating back to the 2023 season, with the one exception being the race at this track back in February in which Tyler Reddick’s Toyota started on pole after qualifying was rained out.
Blaney nabbed the top spot over his Team Penske teammate Joey Logano with a lap of 179.912 mph over Logano’s 179.702 mph lap to give Penske a front row sweep, which also coincides with Ford’s front row qualifying sweeps from February 2023 to present day.
The two Team Penske Fords on the front row will be followed by a trio of Chevrolets in Kyle Larson, Austin Dillon, and Daniel Suarez to round out the top-five qualifiers.
The remainder of the top-10 went to Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain, and Brad Keselowski.
Despite starting up front, Blaney warned not to take too much out of qualifying in regards to the race as a lot can happen between the green flag and the checkered.
“It changes a lot in the draft and stuff like that tomorrow. Whether you’re leading or not it changes a ton – the bumps and just how your car handles. It’s just nice to have a good day,” said Blaney.
“Honestly, every single other person on this 12 group other than me should be sitting up here because they’re the reason we won the pole today. They did a good job of building a fast car, but there’s not much you can take away from today to apply to tomorrow.”
Points leader Denny Hamlin and second-place points holder Tyler Reddick will start from 28th and 31st, respectively, but Blaney added that is expected from the Toyotas and they will no doubt be a threat on Sunday.
“I feel like they normally don’t qualify great at these speedways with just the build of their race car. Usually, that means they can probably be aggressive in the draft and get in the middle and get to the top and things like that, so I’m sure we’re gonna see them up there,” he explained.
“You look at the spring race here and the Toyotas were really fast when it came race time. They handled really, really good, so it’s all about how you balance it out and hopefully our balance in the race is good enough to be able to either maintain the lead or, if we do get shuffled back, to be able to go forward.
“You don’t really know that until the race starts and you just hope you’ve planned to build your setup around handling pretty decent. Hopefully, we’ve done that as well. Hopefully, we have the best of both worlds.”
Sunday’s Quaker State 400 is scheduled for 7:00 pm ET on TNT, with an expected green flag of 7:19 pm – weather permitting, as storms are forecasted to be in the area throughout the day.
Chase Elliott is the defending race winner of the summer race at Atlanta.
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