Team Penske driver, Joey Logano, was fastest in qualifying Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway and won the Busch Light Pole Award with a 177.374 mph lap in his No. 22 Ford. It is Logano’s second pole this season, his second at Atlanta and his 28th career pole.
He described the importance of his qualifying run and the nostalgia it evoked.
“I probably put a little bit more weight on the team on this one, but, either way, it’s still cool to get a pole. I’ve never been on the front row of a superspeedway, forget a pole, and I don’t think I’ve ever done it in Xfinity or anything, so this is kind of cool, and doing it here in Atlanta is special for me.
“There are so many memories here. I lived up in one of those condos for five years and raced Legends cars out here for six years and just the memories of walking into Victory Lane a minute ago to get the Pole Award and thinking about driving my Legend’s car in there with my dad and how cool that was and always dreaming about being on the big track when I was running the quarter-mile all the time and how neat it is just to be on the big track. I guess I try to keep those thoughts up front in my mind.”
Ford dominated during qualifying to secure the top eight spots. Team Penske drivers Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney qualified second and third, respectively, with Brad Keselowski, Aric Almirola, Kevin Harvick, Chris Buescher and Chase Briscoe rounding out the top eight.
“Congrats to everyone at Ford Performance and the Roush Yates Engine shop, everybody including Team Penske bringing lot of speed.,” Cindric said after qualifying. “I’m proud of that. Hopefully, it translates for tomorrow. I think this is as much of a handling race as it is anything else. You’ve got to have speed to keep the lead, so we’ll see what we have tomorrow to be able to race through the field, but obviously, we have the speed to stay up front.”
Kyle Larson will start ninth in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell will start the race 10th in his No. 20 Toyota.
Sunday’s Cup Series Ambetter Health 400 is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET on FOX with radio coverage by PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
