Ryan Preece Snags NASCAR Cup Series Pole at Richmond Raceway

With two races remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season, Ryan Preece has a lot left to race for. As the driver comes into Saturday night's Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway winless and the first driver outside of the Playoff cutline, a win this weekend or next week at Daytona would secure him his first career NASCAR Cup Series Playoff berth.

Starting Lineup: Cook Out 400 at Richmond

Preece's bid to check the win off this weekend at Richmond Raceway will begin from the front of the field as the driver of the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse secured the second pole position of his 212-race NASCAR Cup Series career.

The Connecticut native turned a fast lap time of 22.244 seconds (121.381 mph), which allowed him to top 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick for the pole position by a margin of 0.087 seconds.

Preece, who was the 37th-quickest of 38 in practice earlier in the afternoon, was all smiles after sweating it out watching the final few drivers attempt to knock him from the pole position.

"Yeah, that was great adjustments by [crew chief] Derrick [Finley] and everybody with this Kleenex/Kroger Ford Mustang. I can't thank RFK enough for the opportunity, and boy, what a racecar," Preece said in his post-qualifying interview on TruTV. "It might not have shown up in practice early on for that fast lap, but it did in qualifying."

While he narrowly missed out on the pole position, Reddick was thrilled with the speed in his No. 45 race car in the qualifying session, and he feels like he has the long-run speed to contend for a win on Saturday night at Richmond Raceway.

"I mean, I'm honestly really happy with that result with our Chumba Casino Toyota Camry. Yeah, you know, in practice I thought we were decent, but it was kind of hard to read with where the caution fell for [Joey Logano]. We made good gains in practice on our Camry, and just proud of everyone at 23XI for working on it. It seemed like the long-run, the car was doing what I wanted it to do," Reddick said.

AJ Allmendinger surprised with a solid third-place qualifying run, which slotted him in ahead of Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott, who secured the fourth and fifth spots respectively in the session.

Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, and Michael McDowell rounded out the top-10 fastest in qualifying.

When you look at the scoring sheet and see Josh Berry sitting 17th in the starting lineup, you may not feel that's super impressive, but when you factor in that Berry was the fourth driver to take a qualifying lap on Friday afternoon, the fact that he held on for a top-20 qualifying spot was impressive.

In a media availability earlier in the week, Berry felt if he would be lucky to nab a top-25 starting spot. Now, the driver, who has a career-best finish of second at Richmond Raceway, can chase his second victory of the season from a decent starting spot.

Joey Logano, who suffered a cut tire in practice, which sent him into the outside wall, attempted a qualifying lap, but the damage on his car resulted in a severe tire rub. Logano made the attempt in an effort to transfer his scuffed set of qualifying tires into Saturday night's race. Now, he'll be a set of tires short compared to the rest of the field, and he'll have to try to come from the back of the starting lineup.