JOLIET, Ill. — Denny Hamlin looked at the scoring monitor and raised his eyebrows Saturday afternoon at Chicagoland Speedway.
Hamlin, who had run earlier in the qualifying session for Sunday’s eero 400 at the 1.5-mile track had nipped Kyle Larson by a mere on-one-thousandth of a second to win his fourth pole of the season aboard the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
Hamlin ran a lap of 30.296 seconds, compared to 30.297 for Larson in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
“I don’t want to continue to underplay it, but we got really fortunate. The last 12 cars had full sun. The last few had like 90-percent sun, but I think it was the deciding factor,” Hamlin said. “We saw right after I went, the track got hotter and seems like the corner speeds of those guys started to slow down. I think that if there was one more car behind Ty Gibbs they definitely would have beat us, but because it went full shade we got fortunate there. They did a really good job with my car overnight.
“We worked for a long time with the team trying to figure out what I need to go faster and execute around here. We did a mock run yesterday, that was helpful for me to get a good balance check. But generally these are great race tracks for us.”
RFK Racing teammates Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski will share the second row with Hamlin’s JGR teammates Ty Gibbs, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe filling positions five through seven.
It was Hamlin’s 52nd NASCAR Cup Series pole.
