Ryan Blaney will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the start of Saturday night's Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway after earning his career-high fourth pole of the season.
RICHMOND, Va. -- Ryan Blaney will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the start of Saturday night's Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway.
Team PenskeBlaney lapped the 0.75-mile Richmond Raceway in 22.225 seconds, averaging 121.485 mph to earn his fourth pole of the 2026 Cup Series season. He now has more poles this season than any other season. His previous single-season record was three in 2018 and 2022.
"I think Jonathan [Hassler, crew chief] and I have worked through how we can get that better and me just thinking of how do you adjust from end of practice race mindset to qualifying. Here it’s super tough because your last lap in practice to qualifying, you’re about to qualify three seconds faster than what you just ran, so it’s how do you mentally switch over to that and figure out how to do it in one lap because the second lap today wasn’t gonna do it. Jonathan has done a good job of just trying to work through on how do we get better and it’s been fun to work through that," Blaney said.
Chase Briscoe will share the front row with Blaney.
Most impressive in the top-10 is Josh Berry, who will start third. The last two weeks, he finished seventh at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and fourth at Iowa Speedway.
Berry is looking for a ride in 2027 and felt good about his chances not only this week but next week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway where he finished second last year.
Iowa winner Ty Gibbs starts fourth. Starting alongside William Byron, Ryan Preece will start sixth after gaining ground on the cutline with just a 20th-place finish.
Blaney, Briscoe, Berry, Gibbs, Byron, Preece, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano are the top-10 starters.
Connor Zilisch just missed out starting in the top-10, ending up 11th in qualifying. Chase contenders Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin will start 13th and 14th, respectively.
Starting 16th is Austin Dillon who has won the Cook Out 400 the last two years.
Ross Chastain, who gained significant points on the cutline at Iowa, will start 18th, just ahead of Chris Buescher in 19th.
Austin Cindric starts 23rd as he tries to hang on to a Chase spot with two races to go and 29 points to spare. As they run when the race starts, if Preece were to finish sixth in the stages and the race, with Cindric in 23rd, Preece would cut the gap down to a few points.
Cindric's start isn't good but it's not as bad as three drivers in particular.
Kyle Larson, Shane van Gisbergen and Tyler Reddick will start 30th, 31st and 32nd, respectively. Larson and Reddick have each fallen from their peak in the points standings, while SVG is trying to hang on to a Chase spot, 47 points above the cutline.
Daniel Suarez and Erik Jones were fastest in practice, running almost identical times. Austin Cindric, Riley Herbst, Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin, Ty Dillon, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski and Josh Berry rounded out the top-10 in practice.
Cindric, Larson, Michael McDowell, Bowman, Herbst, Jones, Keselowski, Reddick, SVG and Ty Dillon were fastest on the 10-lap average. Blaney, Logano and Gibbs received attention from accomplished crew chief Rodney Childers, who noted they looked good on the long run as the tires fell off.
