Ryan Blaney captured the pole for Sunday’s Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway where he is the defending race winner.
Blaney turned a lap of 176.897 mph to take his second pole this season and the fourth of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career.
All-Time Pole Winners | Pocono Pole Winners
Sunday will be Blaney’s third straight top-five start at Pocono.
“We always say it’s hard to do this three-round deal because you have to keep improving your car,” Blaney said.
“You can never just leave it alone. We changed stuff from round-to-round. We made a great, great change right before the last round to figure out what we need. I didn’t hit Turn 1 very good my first two rounds and finally figured out a better way to get through there.”
It will be an all-Ford front row as Kevin Harvick will start from the second position.
“I thought we did a really good job of trying to pick a pace and trying not to be a hero on every lap and we were able to pick up a tenth in each round,” Harvick said.
“We got a little loose there in three and I didn’t want to tug on the wheel any more just because of the fact I didn’t want it to get any looser so I just let it slide to the center and had to wait and gave up a good solid tenth there. It was still a great lap for our Busch Beer Ford and starting up front is a big deal here.”
Jamie McMurray, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five.
Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Ryan Newman, Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin completed the first 10 qualifiers.
Other notables in Sunday’s field include Chase Elliott (11th), Jimmie Johnson (15th), Brad Keselowski (17th), Bubba Wallace (19th) and Matt Kenseth (26th).
Teams will have a practice sessions on Saturday starting at 11 a.m. ET to dial in their cars for Sunday’s 14th race of the 2018 season. Motor Racing Network will have live coverage of the session.
