Logano Gets A Home Pole For Cup Playoff Race In Loudon

Joey Logano celebrates the Busch Light Pole Award at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. (Rusty Jarrett/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

LOUDON, N.H. – Hoping to snap Joe Gibbs Racing’s stranglehold on victory lane in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Team Penske’s Joey Logano laid down a flier at his home racetrack Saturday afternoon.

As the third-to-last driver to go out in Busch Light Pole Qualifying at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Logano surged past session-long pacesetter Josh Berry to secure the top starting spot for the Mobil 1 301 at the ‘Magic Mile’.

Logano’s lap of 29.159 seconds (130.622 mph) in the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse outpaced Berry by nearly two tenths of a second and ultimately edged teammate Ryan Blaney by 17 hundredths for the pole.

It gave the three-time and defending Cup Series champion – a native of Middletown, Conn. – his 33rd career pole and second of the year, but his first in front of the New England faithful after 17 years at the sport’s top level.

“Man, I’ve got a great group of guys,” Logano beamed. “Paul [Wolfe, crew chief] knows how to help me get the car where it needs to be. It’s my home track! It feels so good to run well here and to finally get a pole here. We’ve won here, but never qualified this well here until now and it’s really rewarding for the effort that all these guys put in every week.

“A good starting spot in the playoffs matters the most right now, so hopefully we can capitalize on that and win our way into the next round right away,” he added. “We’ve got a good pit stall, if nothing else.”

Logano was one of the drivers selected to participate in last month’s tire test of the new rubber compound that will be used this weekend in Loudon, and circled the extra track time as key to his early speed.

“It’s just more laps. These days, we hardly get practice anymore, so any time you can make laps and learn then it’s something that you can use to your advantage,” he noted. “We’ve got a little bit of work to do in race trim, but we’re not far off, so I know we can tune it in and be right where we need to be.”

Joining Logano on Sunday’s front row is Blaney, who filled out the Penske front-row lockout at the flat, 1.058-mile oval that opens the Round of 12 of the Cup Series postseason.

Blaney was the penultimate driver to post a time and turned in a 29.329-second clip (129.865 mph) with the No. 12 Menards/Libman Ford.

“I feel good for tomorrow,” said Blaney. “I was happy with our race run in practice, and was fairly happy with the lap in qualifying, too. … I knew what Josh ran, and I knew what I had to beat from him, and then I come back and look at the time and I’m a tenth and a half off of Joey. He ran a heck of a lap.

“Appreciate everyone for bringing fast [Penske-prepared] cars this weekend, and now the goal is to put it all together on race day.”

Berry starts third Sunday in the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Ford, the only non-playoff driver in the top five, with 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick and Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron following behind.

Carson Hocevar, Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, Denny Hamlin, and Shane van Gisbergen filled out the top 10.

Van Gisbergen’s effort marked the second-best starting spot on an oval track in his brief Cup Series career, behind only his sixth-place qualifying lap from Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway in July.

Playoff drivers lining up deeper in the field include Bubba Wallace (14th), Kyle Larson (16th), Chase Briscoe (18th), Christopher Bell (19th), Austin Cindric (22nd), and Chase Elliott (27th).

Broadcast coverage of Sunday’s Mobil 1 301 from New Hampshire kicks off at 2 p.m. ET, live on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.