{"id":522714,"date":"2026-07-12T19:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T19:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/522714\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T19:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T19:50:09","slug":"nascar-cup-atlanta-starting-lineup-penske-1-2-with-ryan-blaney-on-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/522714\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Cup Atlanta starting lineup: Penske 1-2 with Ryan Blaney on pole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Blaney<\/a> will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup race, driving the No. 12 Team Penske<\/a> Ford. This is Blaney’s 14th career pole and his second of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Blaney’s pole lap was 30.815s, 0.036s clear of Penske teammate Joey Logano<\/a>, who will join him on the front row in the No. 22 Team Penske Ford.<\/p>\n

And while he was happy with the pole, Blaney knows there are still a lot of unknowns with no practice this weekend.<\/p>\n

“How it’s going to react tomorrow in the race, in traffic, as the track changes, and as you get laps on the tires — all that,” said Blaney. “You hope you have a decent handle on, but the goal today was to try and qualify the best we could, and we were able to do that. So, I appreciate everyone on this #12 car for bringing me a fast car. It’s great to have a Team Penske front row. That part is great, and I’m looking forward tomorrow to see what we have in the draft.”<\/p>\n

Kyle Larson<\/a> will start third, Austin Dillon<\/a> fourth, and Daniel Suarez<\/a> fifth. Alex Bowman<\/a>, Chase Elliott<\/a>, Austin Cindric<\/a>, Ross Chastain<\/a>, and Brad Keselowski<\/a> filled out the remainder of the top ten.<\/p>\n

Round 1
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a very windy and hot day at\u00a0EchoPark Speedway, and those tricky conditions quickly led to an issue as Chad Finchum spun in the No. 66 car right as qualifying got underway.<\/p>\n

That was the only incident, though some cars did shoot up the track as they struggled for balance.<\/p>\n

At the top of the charts, it was Penske perfect with all three cars 1-2-3 in Round 1 of qualifying. Chastain was the highest Chevrolet, and no Toyotas advanced as they prioritized race setup over qualifying speed. All JGR and 23XI cars qualified 20th or worse, with Denny Hamlin<\/a> down in 28th and Tyler Reddick<\/a> 31st.<\/p>\n

Round 2
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Watch: Ryan Blaney credits No. 12 team after winning EchoPark pole<\/p>\n

A. Dillon was the tenth and final driver to advance into the second round of qualifying, beating the top-qualifying Toyota of Erik Jones<\/a> in 11th. There was just 0.002s between them for the final transfer spot.<\/p>\n

In the final round, the tenth-fastest driver from Round 1 went out first, so it was Dillon setting the new benchmark in the fight for pole.<\/p>\n

Larson then bested Dillon, but only by 0.002s. He held the top spot until Penske arrived, with both Blaney and Logano overtaking him on the speed charts.<\/p>\n

2026 NASCAR Cup Atlanta Starting Lineup<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup race, driving the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[258961,164089,258959,12314,258958,111,139,69,258960,213,16012],"class_list":["post-522714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-atlanta-ii","tag-atlanta-motor-speedway","tag-joey-logano","tag-nascar-cup","tag-nascar-cup-atlanta-starting-lineup-penske-1-2-with-ryan-blaney-on-pole","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-sports","tag-team-penske"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}