Denny Hamlin is the pole sitter for the third time the season, the only three poles for Toyota, with a 19.354-second/97.840 mph lap Saturday during qualifying for Sunday’s First Data 500. His pole became official after inspection Sunday morning. It's Hamlin’s fourth-career pole at the short track in home state of Virginia.
"We definitely didn’t expect to run that fast, for sure,” Hamlin said. "We didn’t make any mock run, and the fastest in practice was something like a 59 or something like that, so certainly caught us off guard, but really, I just drove it to its capability, and that’s kind of all I had. I was happy with it. I knew when I ran it, I was pretty happy with the lap, so to have the pole is obviously a huge, huge deal here.”
Chase Elliott was second in qualifying but will hve to drop to the back for the start of the race after an engine change. Elliott blew his engine in the opening minutes of the first of two practice sessions Saturday.
“We’d still like to have a good pit pick,” Elliott said prior to his qualifying effort. “A lot of times, that can be as important as your starting spot. So, obviously, we don’t get to keep our starting spot, but a good pit pick would be nice. It would be great to have that first pit box or a really good one. We’ll do our best.”
Three of the eight remaining playoff drivers were in the top-three positions in Saturday evening’s qualifying session, as Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. was third.
“It was a good effort,” Truex said. "We had a little bit of a weird day practicing. It’s always difficult to practice here. A green track this morning pretty much and, then, cold temperatures; it heats up throughout the day. We pretty much threw out the first practice; we only get one, really, and we were off a bit. We tried some new stuff here from what we’ve been doing the last few times and had to kind of go back to home base for awhile in qualifying. Luckily, we hit it pretty close. The guys did a good job, there, and we got a good couple laps in. Happy about it, and hopefully, we can stay somewhere near the front, there.”
Hamlin and Truex were in the provisional front-row starting spots late in qualifying before Elliott split them up aftter going out 34th of the 38 drivers making qualifying attempts. Hamlin held the provisional pole through much of the session, going out 13th in the qualifying order. Truex took provisional second when he went out 24th.
Ty Dillon, playoff driver Kevin Harvick, William Byron and playoff driver Joey Logano all briefly held the provisional pole before Hamlin. By the end of the qualifying session, Harvick was lowest qualifier among playoff drivers, outside the top-20 in 22nd.
By the end of qualifying, five playoff drivers were in the top-10 with Team Penske teammates Ryan Blaney in sixth and Logano in 10th. Playoff drivers Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson qualified 13th and 14th.
Other top-10 qualifiers included Aric Almirola in fourth, Michael McDowell in fifth, Clint Bowyer seventh, Erik Jones eighth and Daniel Suarez in ninth.
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