LEBANON, Tenn. – Denny Hamlin squeezed past Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell at the last second to take the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway. He recorded a time of 29.589 seconds (160.354 mph) around the 1.33-mile concrete oval for his second pole of the season and the 42nd of his career.
“Seems like we’ve definitely fixed some of the things we weren’t very good with last year,” Hamlin said. “Even during practice and during the race, we fell on a terminal issue with the car we just couldn’t get fixed. And it seems like that was an emphasis we worked on coming back here.
“All day today, that was the least of my problems. I definitely feel pretty good about it and certainly, we’re going to work on it overnight and I feel very confident we’ll be in contention tomorrow.”
Based on the rules of the new qualifying format, Josh Berry, who paced the final round of Group A qualifying, will start second. It’s his fifth top-10 starting spot of the 2024 season.
“We had a really solid practice,” Berry said. “The car felt really good and then I was little bit worried about the short run speed, but I felt like in practice I was just getting acclimated to everything. We made some really good adjustments for qualifying and had some really good execution there, so we should be on the front row for my home race. That’s pretty cool.”
Bell starts third – his second 11th top 10 start of the season and the second of his career at Nashville.
Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski complete the top five. Tyler Reddick will start sixth with William Byron, Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher and Austin Cindric rounding out the top 10.
Of note, Martin Truex Jr. will start 17th. Ryan Blaney, winner two weeks ago at Iowa Speedway, will start 18th. Bubba Wallace rolls off 24th, Joey Logano 26th and Kyle Busch 27th. Making his first start with 23XI Racing, Corey Heim will start 29th.
Sunday’s race is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on NBC.