Blaney Puts Penske on the Phoenix Pole While Points Leader Larson Starts 22nd in the Freeway Insurance 500

October 18, 2026

AVONDALE, Ariz.

The five drivers with the best shot at catching Kyle Larson in the Chase will all start Sunday's Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway looking down the track at clean air. Larson will start it looking at 21 cars. Ryan Blaney put Team Penske on the pole in Saturday qualifying with a lap of 26.250 seconds at 137.143 mph, just 0.032 seconds ahead of teammate Joey Logano, and the rest of the top five fell in line exactly the way the standings would script it: Chase Briscoe third, Denny Hamlin fourth, Christopher Bell fifth — the five drivers closest to Larson in the Chase, all starting up front, while the points leader starts 22nd after sliding through Turn 1 on his qualifying lap.

Sunday's race is 312 laps and 312 miles around the one-mile Avondale oval, with stages of 60, 125 and 127 laps. The green flag is set for approximately 3 p.m. ET — noon in Phoenix — with television coverage on USA Network, radio on MRN, and in-car streaming on HBO Max. Blaney did not just win the pole, either. He was also the fastest car in practice at 26.969 seconds and 133.487 mph, a clean sweep of the weekend's speed charts heading into race day.

An all-Penske front row, and a familiar Phoenix script

This is Blaney's fourth pole at Phoenix, his fifth of the season and the 17th of his career, and the track keeps telling the same story about him. He is going for his third straight win at Phoenix Raceway, and he won here in the spring. Logano, starting beside him, is a four-time Phoenix winner. If you are looking for the pattern of this place, it is right there on the front row: Phoenix rewards the drivers who already know its rhythm, and it has been rewarding these two more than anyone lately.

Blaney understood exactly what Saturday was for. "It's really, really important, just from our side, to put yourself up toward the front early in the race, try to get some points early and try to keep track position," he said, per Reuters. Then he put the day in its proper place: "Job one done today... Hopefully, we can keep going." Job one is the pole. Job two is 312 laps of protecting it at a track where track position is the currency everything else is priced in.

Larson's long Sunday, by the numbers

Now the other side of the grid. Larson leads the Chase by 49 points over Hamlin, with Bell 51 back, Briscoe 65 back, Blaney fifth at 85 back and Logano sixth at 92 back. That cushion is real, and it is the only reason Saturday's slide through Turn 1 is a storyline instead of a crisis. Starting 22nd at Phoenix means spending the first stage in traffic, fighting for the points the top five can bank almost by default, and trusting that 312 laps is long enough for the race to come back to the fastest season-long car in the field. It usually is — but "usually" has to survive Stage 1 first, and Stage 1 is only 60 laps.

Briscoe arrives with the other streak in play: he is seeking his third straight Chase win after victories in Las Vegas and at Charlotte. Win again Sunday, from third on the grid, and the math of this Chase changes in a hurry — the gap to Larson stops looking like a cushion and starts looking like a countdown. Hamlin and Bell, fourth and fifth, need no invitation either; both are within a race's worth of points of the lead, and both start close enough to Blaney to make the Penske pair defend from the first lap.

The weekend so far, and the weather for race day

Saturday set the table beyond the Cup garage, too. Jesse Love won Saturday's O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Phoenix — Previously covered Love's win and what it did to that Chase — on a day when points leader Sheldon Creed lost power in Stage 1. The Cup field now gets the last word on the weekend.

Race-day weather looks like a non-story, which in the desert is the best kind. The National Weather Service forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies giving way to sun, a high near 83 degrees and gusts up to 20 mph, per USA Today. Warm, dry and breezy: a slick track by the final stage and no rain plan required. Follow the rest of the weekend in Previously's sports coverage and through The Ticket.

So the shape of Sunday is set. Blaney and Logano lead them to green with the Penske cars hooked up, the three Gibbs cars that fill out the top five are close enough to pounce, and the points leader has to drive through the field to protect a lead that five specific drivers — the five starting in front of everyone — are all mathematically aimed at. Phoenix has a way of making favorites work for it. Larson's 49 points say he can afford the work. The top five say they intend to make him do every lap of it.