While qualifying performance doesn’t typically mean a whole lot in superspeedway racing, Team Penske proved on Saturday afternoon at EchoPark Speedway that they have some really fast Ford Mustangs for Sunday’s Quaker State 400.
Starting Lineup: Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway
Led by Ryan Blaney, the team swept the front row of the starting lineup in qualifying for Sunday’s race. With NASCAR abolishing practice at superspeedways in the Next Gen era, outside of the Daytona 500, Blaney and his team will now wonder how well their car performs in the actual draft.
“Yeah, that’s always the big debate: How is it going to react tomorrow in the race, and in traffic as the track changes, as you get laps on the tires? So, all of that stuff, you hope that you have a decent handle on, but the goal for today was to try to qualify the best we could, and we were able to do that,” Blaney said.
And boy, were they ever able to accomplish the goal on Saturday. Now, they’ll look to check off a race win on Sunday.
“It’s great to have a Team Penske front row,” Blaney said. “So, that part is great. And yeah, I look forward to tomorrow seeing what we have in the draft. Hopefully, we can hang in there and contend for the win.”
For Logano, a three-time series champion, this weekend is a critical test for his hopes of making the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Championship.
Heading into this weekend, the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford can afford no muligans the rest of the way. Logano sits 18th in the championship standings, 16 points below the cutline heading into Sunday’s Quaker State 400.
If he can have a clean and solid evening, he’ll likely find himself above water for the first time in a long while.
Kyle Larson, the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion who hasn’t won a race in more than a year, will start Sunday’s race from the third position, and he will be joined in Row 2 by Austin Dillon, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
Daniel Suarez, Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain, and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Sunday’s Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway, the track formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The Quaker State 400 is scheduled for Sunday, July 12, and will be televised on TNT Sports with television coverage set to kick off at 7:00 PM ET.
