Ryan Blaney qualifies 1st at Richmond for 2nd consecutive NASCAR pole position

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Ryan Blaney qualifies 1st at Richmond for 2nd consecutive NASCAR pole position

2026-08-15 06:53 Last Updated At：07:00

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Ryan Blaney can’t fully explain his recent dominance in NASCAR qualifying, but he attributed Mother Nature with an assist Friday at Richmond Raceway.

The Team Penske driver captured his third pole position in the past five races and the 16th of his Cup Series career, turning a lap in 22.225 seconds (121.485 mph) around the 0.75-mile oval. Blaney was the second-to-last driver to make an attempt, and a cloud late in the session cooled the track for better grip and faster speeds.

“I appreciate the cloud,” said Blaney, who also qualified first last week at Iowa Speedway and last month at EchoPark Speedway. “I got the benefit.”

With 12 races remaining after Saturday’s 400-lap event at Richmond, Blaney already has a career-best four pole positions for a single season and is tied with points leader Denny Hamlin for the series lead in 2026.

“I wouldn’t specify myself as a very good qualifier,” Blaney said. “For a little bit I struggled in qualifying, just not really able to find the one-lap speed and kind of doing the wrong things behind the wheel. But I think (crew chief) Jonathan (Hassler) and I have just worked through how we can get better and adjust from the end of practice to the start of qualifying. It’s been fun to work through that.”

Chase Briscoe qualified second, followed by Josh Berry, Ty Gibbs and William Byron.

Denny Hamlin, the Virginia driver who has five wins at Richmond, qualified 14th. The points leader is the most recent winner from the pole at Richmond in 2016.

Blaney is cautiously optimistic that his qualifying speed will transfer to the race at Richmond, where the the pace drops sharply as tires wear.

“With the tire falloff being so vast, one lap is so much different here than a 50- to 70-lap run,” Blaney said. “I’ve been on the side of qualifying really well here and just tanked in the race, But I feel like in practice, my long-run pace was pretty good. The ebbs and flows here, a lot of comers and goers, that’s the beauty of this place.”

Tyler Reddick qualified 32nd after spinning in practice. It’s the worst starting spot since March 2023 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the 23XI Racing driver, who has finished 25th or worse in six of the past nine races while falling from first to fourth in the points standings.

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Lions and tigers begin a long-awaited rescue from a notorious Argentine zoo

LUJAN, Argentina (AP) — Thirty lions and tigers that were kept alive — barely — for years in cramped concrete cages at a shuttered Argentine zoo began entering jumbo-size transport crates Friday as they embarked on ambitious journeys to wildlife sanctuaries halfway across the world in South Africa and the United States.

The cats are being rescued from the former Luján Zoo, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires, after years of uncertainty over their fate. Four Paws, the international animal-welfare organization overseeing the transfer, described it as one of the largest relocations of captive big cats in the world.

“We are putting everything into making this go as smoothly as possible so we can celebrate that 30 lives have improved because of this effort,” said Luciana D’Abramo, program director for Four Paws.

Once loaded into their crates and placed aboard cargo and passenger jets, nine tigers and six lions will be flown to Lionsrock, a Four Paws sanctuary in South Africa that houses more than 80 big cats across natural enclosures sprawling 60 hectares (148 acres). The remaining eight tigers and seven lions will travel to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, a vast refuge on the grasslands northeast of Denver where rescued lions, tigers and other animals roam expansive habitats.

But getting there is no easy feat: The big cats bound for Colorado will fly through Chile, while the others will travel to Johannesburg via Frankfurt or Amsterdam before a four-hour drive to Lionsrock.

The Four Paws handlers trained many of the lions and tigers to enter the crates voluntarily. But some of the big cats required sedation, including two tigers that veterinarians hoisted in canvas slings Friday and carried by hand to their transport crates.

Argentine authorities shut down the Lujan Zoo — famous for letting visitors handle and pose for pictures with tigers and lions — over safety and animal welfare concerns in 2020. D’Abramo said about 200 big cats were living there when it closed. Only 112 remained when Four Paws first arrived in 2023 seeking a solution.

By the time the organization was allowed to take over the site two years later, that number had fallen to 62. Some of the captive animals can barely walk because of obesity, muscle loss or poor nutrition. Others suffer from dental and kidney disease, complications from declawing and injuries that never healed properly.

“That alone shows the level of overcrowding and the conditions in which these animals have endured,” D’Abramo said.

The organization retrained longtime zoo employees in modern animal-welfare practices and began improving the cats’ diets and medical care. This transfer leaves more than 20 lions and tigers at Luján while Four Paws searches for their long-term homes.

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