The driver who used to call himself poor in qualifying
Ryan Blaney never liked qualifying. He said it himself.
“I wouldn’t call myself a very good qualifier. For a while I really struggled, I couldn’t find the speed over one lap, I was doing the wrong things behind the wheel.” Three poles in his last five races later, that line sounds a bit dated.
On Friday afternoon at Richmond Raceway, the Team Penske driver in the No. 12 Ford posted a lap at 121.485 mph around the 0.75-mile oval. It was the 16th pole of his career. Fourth of the season. And it came in the closing minutes of the session.
Blaney says the breakthrough came through work with crew chief Jonathan Hassler. It was about switching from race mode to one-lap mode. At Richmond, he says, the gap between the final practice run and the qualifying lap is three seconds. That is where it happens. In the head.
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Briscoe misses by five hundredths
Chase Briscoe came mighty close. Five hundredths. The driver of the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing will start on the front row, with a 13th top-10 start of the season.
Josh Berry put the No. 21 Ford of Wood Brothers Racing third. Ty Gibbs, last week’s winner at Iowa Speedway, is fourth. William Byron rounds out the top five in the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
And the championship leader? 14th. Denny Hamlin has won five times at Richmond, but he’s got work to do.
Dillon has Petty and Allison in his sights
Austin Dillon qualified his No. 3 Chevrolet 16th on a 37-car grid. A number that tells you very little about what is at stake.
The Richard Childress Racing driver has won the last two races at Richmond. A third straight would make him only the third driver in NASCAR history to do it at this track. The other two are Richard Petty and Bobby Allison, and the last time anyone pulled it off was in 1983-84.
Dillon is not pretending the car is perfect. “We need to improve the car, we’re not where we were in testing last year. We’ve got to keep working and see what we can do.” The Cook Out 400 goes green at Richmond on Saturday night.
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