Denny Hamlin will start on the pole for Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.
Wheeling the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota around the 1.99-mile road course, Hamlin edged 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick by 0.093 seconds in the final round of qualifying.
To Hamlin’s surprise, the third lap in the final run was his best.
“He would say otherwise, but Chris (Gabehart, crew chief) was trying to get me unbuckled after our last lap in the final round,” Hamlin said. “He was like ‘that’s a good day, that’s a good starting spot.’ I just asked him ‘you don’t want me to try again? Maybe I could do it.’ I’m glad we did try again.
“The good things that we saw about the tires was they had a big fall off after a certain number of laps. I thought I saw two seconds or more after 10 laps, which is really good because it is going to allow us – tires are going to matter, your pit strategy will matter,” Hamlin continued.
“All that basically means is we didn’t do a good job on our earlier laps, and none of us really professional road course racers. We don’t do it all of the time. There are certainly those that are better than others, but if you can go right back out and run faster, it just means that you didn’t optimize or do a good enough job your first time out.”
Click here for qualifying results.
Last year’s third-place finisher at Sonoma, Michael McDowell, qualified third. It was the Front Row Motorsport driver’s best qualifying effort of the season.
“I’m bummed. We had a really fast Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang, but those two extra runs there that we didn’t need on tires hurt us,” McDowell said. “Obviously, pushing hard and anything you push hard you make a few mistakes here and there. Unfortunately, both first runs of each session just had a little bit of front lock up, so that’s unfortunate. I think we had the car to beat today, so that’s what stinks about qualifying third.
“I feel good about our race trim. The cars I out-qualified there I felt like we were way better in race trim. The only one I felt that was better than us was maybe the 5 (Kyle Larson), so we’ve got a good car for tomorrow and we’ll get after it. It’s good to be disappointed with third. I haven’t had a career pole here in the Cup Series, so I was hoping today would be it. I gave it all I had and just a little bit too much and over-stepped it.”
Christopher Bell and A.J. Allmendinger rounded out the top five.
Two JGR Toyotas in Ty Gibbs (sixth) and Martin Truex Jr. (eighth), followed suit. RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher will start seventh.
Defending Sonoma race winner Daniel Suarez qualified ninth, with Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott rounding out the top 10.
Saturday’s qualifying was a struggle for Stewart-Haas Racing, with Aric Almirola heading the four-car effort in 20th. Kevin Harvick and Ryan Preece slotted in behind Almirola (21st and 22nd), while Chase Briscoe ended time trials in 24th.