RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 Ryan Preece will start from the pole position Saturday night at Richmond Raceway while trying to lock in a spot for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. <\/p>\n
Preece earned his second career pole in 212 Cup starts with a lap at 121.381 mph around the 0.75-mile oval in his No. 60 Ford.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a great car,\u201d said Preece, whose previous pole came at Martinsville Speedway in April 2023.<\/p>\n
With two races remaining in the regular season, Preece still can make the playoffs through the points standings, but a win would secure an automatic berth.<\/p>\n
Tyler Reddick, who can lock into the 16-driver playoff field on points with a strong result Saturday, qualified second. AJ Allmendinger will start third despite his No. 16 Chevrolet failing prerace inspection twice, which resulted in a loss of pit stall selection and the ejection of car chief Jaron Antley.<\/p>\n
Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott rounded out the top five in qualifying.<\/p>\n
Sweeping the top three starting spots, Preece, Reddick and Allmendinger were joined by six other winless drivers qualifying in the top 15: Brad Keselowski (sixth), Alex Bowman (ninth), Michael McDowell (10th), Austin Dillon (11th), Chris Buescher (12th) and Carson Hocevar (15th). It\u2019ll be a tougher slog to get to the front for Ty Gibbs (22nd) and Kyle Busch (28th).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Crew members roll the car of Ryan Preece onto the track during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, at the Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa. Credit: AP\/Bryon Houlgrave<\/p>\n
Three-time Cup champion Joey Logano, a two-time winner at Richmond, will start last in the 38-car field after being unable to turn a lap in qualifying. Logano hit the Turn 4 wall in practice because of a right-front tire problem on his No. 22 Ford.<\/p>\n
Starting position is critical at Richmond, which tends to have long green-flag stretches when it\u2019s easy to fall a lap down. Last August\u2019s race had only three caution flags, which is tied for the fewest on a short track since the 2022 debut of the Next Gen car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 Ryan Preece will start from the pole position Saturday night at Richmond Raceway while trying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[19984,425,99,9815],"class_list":["post-85957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-motor-racing","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-wires-bot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}