What a difference roughly an hour can make, huh? Ryan Preece, who turned the 37th-fastest lap in Friday afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series practice session at Richmond Raceway, was able to vastly improve upon his speed in qualifying, which immediately followed practice. So much in fact, that he would go on to score the second pole position of his 212-race NASCAR Cup Series career.
Pre-Race Resources:
Cook Out 400: Starting Lineup | Practice Results
Now, the driver of the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, who sits 34 points shy of his first-career NASCAR Cup Series Playoff berth with two races remaining in the regular season, will start Saturday night’s Cook Out 400 at the 0.750-mile short track from the best spot imaginable — first.
After picking up the pole position, Preece praised his crew chief, Derrick Finley, for making the perfect adjustments to their race car during the short break between practice and qualifying.
“Yeah, that was great adjustments by Derrick and everybody with this Kleenex/Kroger Ford Mustang. I can’t thank RFK enough for the opportunity, and boy, what a racecar,” Preece said in an interview on TruTV. “It might not have shown up in practice early on for that fast lap, but it did in qualifying.”
Preece’s pole-winning run came thanks to a 22.244-second (121.381 mph) circuit around Richmond Raceway, which allowed him to top Tyler Reddick by 0.087 seconds for the pole.
Though he missed out on the pole by a narrow margin, Reddick wasn’t upset following the qualifying session.
“I mean, I’m honestly really happy with that result with our Chumba Casino Toyota Camry. Yeah, you know, in practice I thought we were decent, but it was kind of hard to read with where the caution fell for [Joey Logano]. We made good gains in practice on our Camry, and just proud of everyone at 23XI for working on it. It seemed like the long run, the car was doing what I wanted it to do,” Reddick said.
AJ Allmendinger, the driver of the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet, impressed by clocking in third-fastest in the qualifying session, in what was an astonishing session for Kaulig Racing, overall (Allmendinger’s teammate Ty Dillon qualified 16th).
Denny Hamlin, a five-time Richmond Raceway winner, will start Saturday night’s race from the fourth position, and Chase Elliott snatched a top-five starting spot in fifth.
Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, and Michael McDowell rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Saturday night’s race.
Joey Logano, who had a rough day on Friday as he crashed in practice following a popped right front tire, attempted, but failed to turn a qualifying lap as he had a severe tire rub. By not finishing his qualifying lap, Logano will be unable to transfer his set of tires from qualifying into Sunday’s race, which will put him at a tire disadvantage to the rest of the field.
On top of that, Logano will have to start from the rear of the field in his No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang.
