{"id":60132,"date":"2026-08-14T17:50:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T22:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=60132"},"modified":"2026-08-16T11:12:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T16:12:42","slug":"blaney-continues-qualifying-surge-with-richmond-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/14\/blaney-continues-qualifying-surge-with-richmond-pole\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaney continues qualifying surge with Richmond pole"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

RICHMOND, Va. \u2013 Team Penske\u2019s Ryan Blaney won his third pole position in the last five races and 16th of his championship career Friday afternoon at Richmond Raceway.<\/p>\n

\"\"

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA – AUGUST 14: Ryan Blaney, driver of the #12 BODYARMOR FLASH I.V. Ford, poses for photos after winning the pole award during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway on August 14, 2026 in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by David Jensen\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford will lead the field to green in Saturday night\u2019s Cook Out 400 (7 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) after posting a lap of 121.485 mph around the .75-mile oval, claiming the top position in the closing minutes of qualifying session; his fourth pole of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t kind of specify myself as a very good qualifier; for a little bit I struggled in qualifying and just wasn\u2019t able to find the one-lap speed, I was doing the wrong things behind the wheel,\u2019\u2019 said Blaney, the 2024 series champ. \u201cBut I think [crew chief] Jonathan [Hassler] and I kind of worked through, how do we make it better. Adjust that end of race mindset to qualifying. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd here [at Richmond] it\u2019s super tough because your last lap in practice to qualifying, you\u2019re qualifying like three seconds faster than what you just ran so it\u2019s mentally, how do you switch over to that and figure out how to do it in one lap because the second lap today wasn\u2019t going to do it. Jonathan has done a good job of just trying to work through how do we get better and it\u2019s been kind of fun to work through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Chase Briscoe will line his No. 19 Toyota up alongside Blaney on the front row, Blaney bettering his qualifying effort by only .050-second. This is Briscoe\u2019s 13th top-10 start of the season. <\/p>\n

Wood Brothers Racing driver Josh Berry was third fastest in the No. 21 Ford, with last week\u2019s Iowa Speedway race winner, JGR\u2019s Ty Gibbs fourth on the grid in the No. 54 Toyota and Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 William Byron rounding out the top five in the No. 24 Hendrick Chevrolet. <\/p>\n

NASCAR Cup Series championship leader Denny Hamlin \u2013 a five-time Richmond winner – was 14th fastest in qualifying and two-time defending race winner, Richard Childress Racing\u2019s Austin Dillon 16th best in the 37-car field.<\/p>\n

Dillon is attempting to become only the third driver in NASCAR history to win three consecutive Richmond races and join the likes of NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Bobby Allison, who was the last two do in 1983-84.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get our car better, we\u2019re not where we were last year in practice, just got to continue to work on it and see what we can do,\u201d said Dillon, driver of the famous No. 3 Chevrolet. \u201cI think we have tendencies of our car that are good but we\u2019ve just got to get a little better so we\u2019ll just go to work and see what we can find for tomorrow.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service RICHMOND, Va. \u2013 Team Penske\u2019s Ryan Blaney won his third pole position in the last five races and 16th of his championship career Friday afternoon at Richmond Raceway. The driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford will lead the field to green in Saturday night\u2019s Cook Out 400 (7 p.m. ET, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":60127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,486,435],"class_list":["post-60132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-richmond-raceway","tag-ryan-blaney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-fDS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2290511791-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60135,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60132\/revisions\/60135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}