Hamlin Grabs Round of 8 Vegas Pole; South Point 400 Starting Lineup
Denny Hamlin will continue the quest for his first Bill France Cup as the Round of 8 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs officially kicks off in Sunday's South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Thanks to an ultra-quick lap time in Saturday afternoon's qualifying session, the 59-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner will begin the race from the pole position.
After cranking out a 29.213-second (184.849 mph) lap time, Hamlin admitted in a post-qualifying interview on TruTV that he felt like he got just about all of the speed that he could out of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE on his run.
"I felt good about it, truthfully," Hamlin stated. "There wasn't a whole lot left out there for it, but great job with this ampm team to get my car good. It was good in the short run in practice, as well. Gotta work on it on the long run for tomorrow. But Saturday has really been our Achilles heel at this racetrack. That's a great way to turn that around."
Hamlin, who has just one win over his illustrious career at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, feels that too many times he and his No. 11 team have started the race weekend behind the eight-ball in Sin City due to a poor performance on Saturday. His 47th career NASCAR Cup Series pole is the driver's first ever at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
With the pole in hand, Hamlin feels much more confident about his chances of scoring a win in Sunday's race, which would automatically advance him into the Championship 4 field to fight for the NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway next month.
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"Going through the swings of this racetrack. It's going to go through so many transitions from Saturday to the beginning of Sunday to the end of Sunday. And so, trying to prepare and set up your car for the end of Sunday, but having to deal with it on Saturday is always a challenge for us here at this racetrack," Hamlin admitted, "but the team just did a great job of putting a big old Band-Aid on it today, and hopefully tomorrow is going to be better."
As for the pressure of fighting for the one thing that has painfully eluded him throughout his 20-year NASCAR Cup Series career, a championship, Hamlin says he isn't getting stressed out, and he's not focusing on items out of his control. Instead, he's choosing to focus on the tasks at hand that he can control, which is driving the No. 11 car as fast as humanly possible in each of the final four races of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.
"There's not a whole lot of pressure. I'm just going to do the best I can every week. You know, concerning myself with Stage Points, and strategy and all of that stuff, it just doesn't matter. And it's not anything that really I can control."
Hamlin will be joined on the front row by Chase Briscoe, a fellow Playoff contender and one of his three Joe Gibbs Racing teammates. Briscoe clocked in just 0.036 seconds off the pace of Hamlin's pole-winning run to secure his spot on the front row of the starting grid.
It was an incredible qualifying session for Joe Gibbs Racing as Christopher Bell, the third bullet in the Playoffs chamber for JGR, was able to make it a clean sweep of the top-three starting spots in Sunday's race with a third-place qualifying effort.
Bell, a native of Norman, Oklahoma, has never captured victory in a NASCAR Cup Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but in this race a season ago, Bell started on pole, led a race-high 155 laps, and just missed out on a win as he finished second to Joey Logano, who parlayed fuel strategy to steal the Championship 4 berth clinching win. Bell will look to avenge last year's loss on Sunday.
Behind the Joe Gibbs Racing Playoff trio in qualifying were the three Hendrick Motorsports drivers, who still find themselves alive in the championship fight. Chase Elliott locked up the fourth starting spot, while William Byron and Kyle Larson will start fifth and sixth.
Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick, defending series champion Joey Logano, and Ty Gibbs rounded out the top-10 qualifiers for Sunday's South Point 400 at Las Vegas.
Logano, who enters this weekend with the longest odds of any of the eight Playoff contenders at capturing the championship, made an incredible recovery from the speed he displayed in practice earlier in the afternoon. Logano, who will start from ninth on Sunday, was just 28th-fastest in practice on Saturday.
Only one NASCAR Cup Series Playoff contender will start Sunday's race from outside the top-10, Ryan Blaney, the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion. Blaney recorded the 14th-fastest lap in the qualifying session, which slotted him in behind rookie contender Shane van Gisbergen, who has been much improved on ovals as of late.
Official Starting Lineup for Sunday's South Point 400 at Las Vegas
Rank | Car | Driver | Lap time | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 11 | Denny Hamlin (P) | 29.213 | 184.849 |
2 | 19 | Chase Briscoe (P) | 29.249 | 184.622 |
3 | 20 | Christopher Bell (P) | 29.255 | 184.584 |
4 | 9 | Chase Elliott (P) | 29.259 | 184.559 |
5 | 24 | William Byron (P) | 29.304 | 184.275 |
6 | 5 | Kyle Larson (P) | 29.328 | 184.124 |
7 | 23* | Bubba Wallace | 29.401 | 183.667 |
8 | 45* | Tyler Reddick | 29.413 | 183.592 |
9 | 22 | Joey Logano (P) | 29.421 | 183.542 |
10 | 54 | Ty Gibbs | 29.454 | 183.337 |
11 | 17 | Chris Buescher | 29.537 | 182.822 |
12 | 48 | Alex Bowman | 29.540 | 182.803 |
13 | 88 | Shane van Gisbergen # | 29.586 | 182.519 |
14 | 12 | Ryan Blaney (P) | 29.592 | 182.482 |
15 | 1 | Ross Chastain | 29.594 | 182.469 |
16 | 60 | Ryan Preece | 29.626 | 182.272 |
17 | 99 | Daniel Suarez | 29.645 | 182.156 |
18 | 71 | Michael McDowell | 29.647 | 182.143 |
19 | 43 | Erik Jones | 29.679 | 181.947 |
20 | 16 | AJ Allmendinger | 29.690 | 181.879 |
21 | 41 | Cole Custer | 29.693 | 181.861 |
22 | 77 | Carson Hocevar | 29.703 | 181.800 |
23 | 38* | Zane Smith | 29.720 | 181.696 |
24 | 47 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | 29.765 | 181.421 |
25 | 3 | Austin Dillon | 29.779 | 181.336 |
26 | 42 | John Hunter Nemechek | 29.842 | 180.953 |
27 | 7 | Justin Haley | 29.846 | 180.929 |
28 | 4* | Noah Gragson | 29.862 | 180.832 |
29 | 21 | Josh Berry | 29.909 | 180.548 |
30 | 34* | Todd Gilliland | 30.022 | 179.868 |
31 | 2 | Austin Cindric | 30.089 | 179.468 |
32 | 8 | Kyle Busch | 30.090 | 179.462 |
33 | 35* | Riley Herbst # | 30.147 | 179.122 |
34 | 6 | Brad Keselowski | 30.210 | 178.749 |
35 | 10 | Ty Dillon | 30.321 | 178.094 |
36 | 51 | Cody Ware | 30.627 | 176.315 |
37 | 44* | JJ Yeley (i) | 30.661 | 176.120 |
38 | 78* | Katherine Legge | 31.644 | 170.648 |
(P) indicates a NASCAR Cup Series Playoff driver
* indicates "Open" entry
# indicates a Rookie of the Year contender
(i) indicates a driver ineligible to score points
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.
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