Ryan Blaney beats Kevin Harvick to win Cup Series pole at Las Vegas

Ryan Blaney left no doubt who had the fastest car during qualifying Friday to capture the pole for the Pennzoil 400 Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The pole-winning run saw Blaney put down a 191.489 mph lap to easily edge second-place Kevin Harvick (190.248 mph). It was Blaney’s third pole in 93 Monster Energy Cup Series starts, and represented Harvick’s best effort in 18 races at Las Vegas.

“My team does such a good job getting us better each round — we definitely did that,” Blaney said. “… It’s cool to get our first pole of the season and hopefully our car will be good in race trim (Saturday) and come Sunday.”

The 24-year-old Blaney is regarded as one of NASCAR’s rising stars and has opened the 2018 solidly, finishing seventh in the Daytona 500 after leading a race-high 118 laps and recording a 12th-place finish at Atlanta. He is second in the series point standings, trailing leader Joey Logano by six.

“Hopefully we can keep that up, see what our race car is like (Saturday in practice) and try to have a good run on Sunday,” Blaney said. “It would be really nice to get a win here early in the season and get everything started off on the right foot.”

Harvick enters the third race of the season coming off a dominating win last weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He won at Las Vegas in 2015 and is considered one of the favorites to win on Sunday.

“For us, this hasn’t been a track that we’ve qualified well at,” Harvick said. “We’ve always been really good in race trim and felt like that was fine but qualifying has definitely been a struggle. For us, this is a lot better start to the weekend.”

Kurt Busch, a Las Vegas native and teammate of Harvick’s at Stewart-Haas Racing, posted the third-fastest time. Defending Cup Series champion and race winner Martin Truex Jr. was fourth, followed by Kyle Larson in fifth. Chase Elliott, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Brad Keselowski, Erik Jones and Joey Logano completed the top 10.