Ryan Blaney is back on top, and the door is wide open to change the direction of the NASCAR Cup Series championship fight at Phoenix Raceway. The No. 12 Team Penske Ford will lead the field to green Sunday after Blaney turned a 26.250-second lap at 137.143 mph during Saturday qualifying for the Freeway Insurance 500. Kyle Larson, the driver everyone is chasing in the standings, will have to work all the way back from 22nd to run up front. The biggest difference between the two starting positions makes qualifying more than just a fight for track position.
With four races remaining in the 2026 Chase, Kyle Larson enters Sunday’s race with a 49-point advantage over Denny Hamlin, but five championship contenders closest to him have secured the first five starts. Blaney sits fifth in the standings, 85 points behind Larson, so he has a lot of ground to make up. However, a strong finish on Sunday could give the Team Penske driver the boost he needs and the opportunity to gain ground while the championship leader is lapped in traffic.
Blaney isn’t backing down from the fight ahead, and he didn’t need much separation to take this afternoon’s pole. His lap was just 0.032 seconds faster than teammate Joey Logano, who posted 136.976 mph. The result puts Team Penske in both front-row spots and puts Blaney in a good position to hold his starting position in the 312-lap Arizona race. The pole also adds a pivotal milestone to Blaney’s 2026 campaign. It is his fifth Busch Light Pole Award of the season, the 17th of his career, and his fourth at Phoenix Raceway.
More importantly, he has already won the last two Cup races at the track, and a third consecutive victory at the 1-mile oval would put him in a position to reshape the entire championship. But he still needs to convert the speed he showed in today’s qualifying run into the ultimate upset on Sunday. Even so, the competition in the field behind will not make it that simple. Chase Briscoe qualified third, followed by Hamlin in fourth, with Christopher Bell rounding out the top five.
Hamlin sits second in the championship standings, 49 points behind leader Larson, while Bell trails by 51 points. Briscoe sits fourth, 65 points back despite winning at both Las Vegas and Charlotte. The top five therefore features the pole winner and four drivers with a stake in the championship battle. This amplifies the pressure. Larson’s qualifying session produced a much different result. The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet struggled and seemed to get loose entering the corners at qualifying, leaving him 13th fastest in practice before he qualified in an upset 22nd.
This is single-handedly Larson’s worst qualifying effort of the Chase thus far and leaves him with considerable ground to make up before he can focus on protecting his points advantage. The numbers offer little comfort. In the previous 18 Cup races at Phoenix, no winner started worse than 13th, and all but three started in the top 10. Larson will have to break that pattern while defending against several of his closest title rivals, and it’s clearly going to be an uphill battle.
Blaney also showed significant speed before qualifying, posting the quickest lap in Saturday’s practice at 133.487 mph over 77 laps. The pace gives the No. 12 team reason to be encouraged heading into Sunday, but Blaney knows the pole is only the first step. The race will demand a balance between collecting stage points, preserving track position, and having enough speed to challenge the rest of the field for the win.
For Larson, the immediate objective is different. He must limit the damage from a difficult qualifying run before the drivers behind can turn their starting positions into championship points. Blaney has earned the advantage at Phoenix, but whether it becomes a defining result in the Chase will depend on what happens tomorrow over 312 laps.
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