Ryan Blaney picked up his first-ever Bristol pole and put Ford out in front for Sunday’s Food City 500 NASCAR Cup Series race from The Last Great Colosseum.
“Just a fun day overall, pretty challenging day,” the 2023 Cup Series champion said. “I think for everybody just kind of figuring out what the track was doing, what the tire was doing. It was pretty, pretty challenging, which was fun.”
Blaney discussed a challenging track, a tire that didn’t have a lot of grip and the narrow gap that it took to make the difference between the top spot or in the pack.
“Qualifying was really interesting because, like the first round, there was tons of grip but it was still tricky. There was a narrow strip you had to hit and then the second round and I don’t think anyone really knew how much grip was gonna be lost, like how much we were going to slow down so that was a tricky situation.”
Blaney unseated teammate Joey Logano, who held the point going into the final round of Bush Beans qualifying on Saturday evening, while Stewart-Haas Ford driver Josh Berry, made his mark qualifying second and on the outside pole.
Blaney told the media following qualifying that when it comes to qualifying, “That’s a super neat thing to be a part of.”
“It’s really hard to do and when you’re guessing how much commitment you have to put in when you have that much loss of grip in between like two laps. It’s really really fun and also that we were able to finish off the day. It was a fun day, a good day,” commented Blaney.
Toyota driver Denny Hamlin qualified one of two Toyota Camrys in the top ten in third, while Bubba Wallace driving the 23XI Toyota in ninth,
Ford had the dominant qualifying performance with five in the top ten, Logano qualifying fourth, with Chase Briscoe qualifying sixth, and Michael McDowell qualifying seventh.
Chevrolet driver Chase Elliott qualified fifth, with fellow Hendrick drivers William Byron qualifying eighth and Kyle Larson rounding out the top ten.
Blaney said that some big decisions and some heavy thinking was going to be taking place between now and tomorrow’s starting time of 3:30 p.m.
“I don’t know what made the biggest change, like the tire to me. I guess it’s the biggest change because the loss of grip was just just massive, you know, and I haven’t seen that many more rolls off the corner here for a really long time.”
Blaney added that he thinks “that has something to do with it and maybe the resin is affecting it a little bit differently on the bottom lane, you know, so I know a lot of factors that are going in that we’re going to be a lot of teams and drivers, and we are going to be really scratching our heads because we don’t know what it’s going to be like as we continue through the night with this truck race or the day with the race.”
The Food City 500 NASCAR Cup Series race will roll off on Sunday afternoon with the green flag being displayed at 3:30 p.m. The race will be broadcast nationally on television on FOX Sports, with radio and audio coverage provided by PRN. The race is NASCAR’s longest continuous sponsorship of a race with Food City as the primary sponsor reaching back to 1992.This year’s Bristol race is the first after running three years on dirt. NASCAR made the decision to return to concrete and also an earlier race date from previous seasons.
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