With a 26.250s lap, Ryan Blaney rocketed to pole position at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday. He was part of an all-Penske front row with teammate Joey Logano second, 0.032s behind.
Blaney has won the last two Cup races at Phoenix, and Penske has consistently been the strongest team at the Arizona track in recent years.
Chase Briscoe started third after winning back-to-back races at Las Vegas and Charlotte, with Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell fourth and fifth, respectively.
Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs, Michael McDowell, Josh Berry, and William Byron filled out the remainder of the top ten.
But the biggest story of qualifying involved championship leader Kyle Larson. He entered this race with a +49-point buffer, but he will start 22nd and facing a very short opening stage.
The winner of the Cup race at Phoenix has started inside the top 15 in each of the last 18 races, and the last driver to win from outside the top-20 was Ryan Newman in 2017. He also started 22nd.
Carson Hocevar was the lowest-qualifying Chase driver in 28th. Both he and Larson had big wiggles during their laps, but there were no incidents during the qualifying session.
“Proud of the lap for sure,” said Blaney after securing pole position. “The car did everything you need to do and stuck when it needed to, so overall really good lap. I’m not the best qualifier at this place, I feel like I race better than I qualify, so really really proud of the effort by all the 12 boys for just working on how we get qualifying speed and what do we need to do to get better, so appreciate them. Great place to start for the weekend — Penske front row, that’s awesome and hopefully we have something for tomorrow.”
Looking ahead to Sunday’s race, Blaney added: “I thought our car was pretty decent in practice at a good speed, we’ll keep tinkering on it a little bit, definitely be different tomorrow, it’s going to be full sun tomorrow, a little bit warmer as today was, you know, a little bit different of just full shade, it’s pretty cool outside, so the track will change a lot, so hopefully we can plan accordingly for that.”
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