Bobby Travis · NASCAR/IndyCar Correspondent
Denny Hamlin secured pole position for the Xfinity 500 ahead of teammate Ty Gibbs, with Chase leader Kyle Larson starting right behind them in third. Bell and Briscoe will have to work their way forward from the midfield in the penultimate race of the season.
Denny Hamlin claimed pole position on Saturday for the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway. With a lap of 19.226 seconds, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver finished just under half a tenth ahead of teammate Ty Gibbs, who took second with 19.275 seconds. For Hamlin, it is likely a statement ahead of the penultimate race of the season, one week before the finale at Homestead, on a track where heavy traffic and restarts traditionally decide wins and losses.
Joe Gibbs Racing sets the benchmark
Hamlin and Gibbs ended up forming the entire front row, with Gibbs 0.049 seconds behind his teammate. Kyle Larson and Austin Cindric followed in row two, then Joey Logano and Ryan Preece in row three. Alex Bowman and William Byron in row four and Chase Elliott and Josh Berry in row five completed the top ten.
What stood out was how close the entire top ten was: just 0.154 seconds separated Hamlin's pole time from Josh Berry in tenth. On a track like Martinsville, where hitting the perfect braking point into the two tight pairs of corners is worth tenths of a second, that shows how tightly bunched the field was heading into the starting grid.
At Team Penske, Cindric and Logano were separated by just 0.005 seconds, albeit in different rows. That was not the closest gap between teammates, though: at Spire Motorsports, Daniel Suárez and Carson Hocevar were only 0.003 seconds apart, and in practice Team Penske, with Ryan Blaney ahead of Joey Logano, and Legacy Motor Club, with John Hunter Nemechek ahead of Erik Jones, had each already shown a difference of just 0.001 seconds.
From practice to qualifying: Larson makes the biggest jump
In practice, a different name had been at the top. Ryan Preece set the fastest time there with 19.600 seconds, ahead of Josh Berry and Todd Gilliland. Hamlin was only sixth in practice, his 19.766 seconds a good deal slower than his lap later in qualifying.
The whole field found significant speed in qualifying. Hamlin improved by 0.540 seconds compared with practice, and Ty Gibbs moved from fourth in practice to the front row. The biggest jump among the front-runners, however, came from Kyle Larson, who improved by 0.670 seconds and went from 29th in practice to third on the grid.
Preece himself slipped back to sixth in qualifying but stayed within striking distance of the front. That leaves RFK Racing in a decent starting position, even if the fastest practice lap could not ultimately be turned into a front-row spot.
Tight grid spots for the Chase leaders
The Xfinity 500 is the penultimate race of the season, and the starting grid puts several Chase contenders in favorable positions. Hamlin himself starts from pole, and Kyle Larson lines up in third. Christopher Bell qualified 14th and Chase Briscoe 11th, both in the midfield of the top 15 rather than right at the front.
Larson leads the Chase standings by 73 points over Hamlin, 74 over Bell and 79 over Briscoe, and could clinch the title early on Sunday with 59 points.
With Hamlin and Gibbs up front and Larson right behind in row two, the start on the tight Martinsville oval is likely to settle an order in the opening laps that will shape the rest of the race. Who breaks through early from the second row, who Bell and Briscoe have to fight past from the midfield, and how the cautions on the 0.526-mile track affect the Chase order will only be decided in Sunday's race.
