Hamlin gets championship Hail Mary off to promising start with Martinsville pole

Denny Hamlin still needs a lot to go his way to have a shot at the NASCAR Cup Series championship, but took a small step forward with pole position at Martinsville Speedway.

Hamlin topped the qualifying leaderboard with a lap of 98.492 mph (19.226 seconds). It is his 54th career pole and sixth at Martinsville.

“Yeah, that was a great lap,” said Hamlin. “I kind of hit all the marks that I wanted to hit; the car did a lot of the things I needed it to do on that first lap. So, it was a really great job by the race team, great adjustments there, and we’ll see what we’ve got tomorrow.”

Fellow Chase drivers filled the top five as Ty Gibbs qualified second at 98.241 mph and championship leader Kyle Larson was third at 98.114 mph. Austin Cindric qualified fourth at 97.987 mph, and Joey Logano took fifth at 97.962 mph.

The gap between Larson and Hamlin is 73 points going into Sunday’s race. Hamlin is a six-time winner at Martinsville, including twice in the fall.

“We’re going to give it all we got, and all we got is all we got,” he said. “I wish I had a little bit more, but we just need to control our own destiny tomorrow, and that’s getting the best day we possibly can, and wherever the chips fall from there, they do.”

Larson rebounded for a top-five qualifying effort after not starting off practice on the right foot.

“It was solid,” he said. “I was hopeful for the lap time to show a little faster because it didn’t feel that bad the first lap, but a little squirmy on entry. But I thought my exit grip was OK. Then the second lap was all that but worse. So, happy to start in the first couple of rows and hopefully we can stay in the front all day.”

Ryan Preece (C) qualified sixth at 97.896 mph, Alex Bowman was seventh at 97.840 mph and William Byron (C) took eighth at 97.770 mph. Chase Elliott (C) was ninth at 97.714 mph and Josh Berry completed the top 10.

Byron is the defending race winner.

The rest of the Chase drivers in qualifying: Chase Briscoe (11th), Tyler Reddick (12th), Ryan Blaney (13th), Christopher Bell (14th), Bubba Wallace (15th), and Chris Buescher (18th). Daniel Suarez (24th) and Carson Hocevar (25th) were further back.

A field of 37 will take the green flag.

NEXT: Xfinity 500 at 2pm ET Sunday.

RESULTS

(C) denotes Chase driver