Blaney wins Cup Series pole at Bristol

Ryan Blaney will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the green flag Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Blaney, who has never won at the Tennessee half-mile, claimed the pole in qualifying with a lap of 127.064 mph (15.101s). It is his second pole at the track and 13th of his career.

“I got free on lap one, landing into (Turn) 1,” Blaney said. “Then it was kind of like, all right, gather yourself back up for (Turns) 3 and 4 to try and get a second lap, and luckily the rear tires came in better the second lap in (Turns) 1 and 2. And then (Turns) 3 and 4, I thought, were really good corners. So, a really great job by all (No.) 12 boys.

“I thought our race car in practice was pretty good, and it was nice that we made pretty good adjustments for qualifying with the pace being up. … It’s a cool start to the weekend. Now we’ve got to do it for 500 laps.”

Tyler Reddick, the points leader, qualified second. Reddick’s lap was 126.871 mph. Chase Briscoe qualified third (126.779 mph) and Riley Herbst qualified fourth (126.679 mph). Ty Gibbs completed the top five (126.537 mph).

Ross Chastain qualified sixth (126.445 mph), Chris Buescher qualified seventh (126.320 mph), and Kyle Larson qualified eighth (126.303 mph). Larson is the defending spring winner at Bristol.

Austin Cindric and Carson Hocevar completed the top 10. Cindric ran a lap of 126.237 mph and Hocevar ran a lap of 126.229 mph.

Denny Hamlin qualified 11th, Bubba Wallace qualified 12th, and Christopher Bell qualified 14th. Bell won the fall race at Bristol. Chase Elliott qualified 18th, Joey Logano qualified 20th, and Brad Keselowski qualified 21st.

In his return to NASCAR racing, Alex Bowman qualified 27th. Kyle Busch qualified 29th. Near the rear of the field, Shane van Gisbergen qualified 33rd and William Byron qualified 34th.

Thirty-seven teams will compete in Sunday’s race.

NEXT: The Food City 500 at 3 p.m. ET Sunday.

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