Playoff time is apparently the right time for Denny Hamlin to knock out his best qualifying efforts of the season. After picking up just one pole through the opening 26 races of the season, Hamlin has busted off two pole-winning efforts to start the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Hamlin, who won the pole for last weekend’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington, backed that effort up with a 32.330-second (139.190 mph) lap time in Saturday’s qualifying session at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
Starting Lineup: Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway
The quick lap around the 1.25-mile track in Madison, IL, was enough for Hamlin to top Kyle Larson for the pole by 0.021 seconds. Incredibly, Hamlin actually felt like he let his team down with his performance from behind the wheel on his qualifying lap.
“I thought I could have done a little bit better job for the team,” Hamlin explained in a post-qualifying interview on TruTV. “But I’m proud of this whole Progressive Toyota team. [Crew Chief] Chris [Gayle] and the whole guys, making really great adjustments. That’s what they did so well last week, which was make those good adjustments before qualifying. Now, we’ve got great track position. Just have to maintain it, and we’ll be in good shape.”
This pole position marks the third of the season for Hamlin, who is now up to 46 pole positions through his 713 NASCAR Cup Series career starts.
While Larson missed out on the pole, the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was thankful to notch a second-place qualifying effort at a track that the whole HMS team has circled as a place where they’ve struggled.
“Absolutely, yeah. This is really great. I think our team needs it more than anything,” Larson said. “We haven’t been able to celebrate a whole lot. We will definitely celebrate a front row starting spot at Gateway. Yeah, happy about that. My car felt pretty good there, I felt like in practice, and still room to be even better. Yeah, good day, and hopefully we can be one spot better tomorrow.”
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion has three wins this season, but none have come since the race before his dismal attempt at the Indianapolis 500/Coca-Cola 600 double in late May. With a front row starting spot on Sunday, Larson hopes he is nearing a return to victory lane.
Chase Briscoe, who has erupted in qualifying this season as he’s scored six pole positions (he had two career poles heading into 2025), was the final driver to take to the track in the qualifying session, which likely had Hamlin nervous. But Briscoe says he turned in a rough lap on the track, and couldn’t believe he was third-fastest.
“I felt like, I thought I could have been on the pole. I just did not put a very good lap together,” Briscoe explained. “I was surprised that it honestly ended up being third. Just a testament to our Bass Pro Shops Toyota, as fast as it’s been. So, yeah, we got at least a good starting spot for tomorrow. It’ll be a good pit spot. This pit road is really tricky; it’s kind of underrated. It’ll be a good start for our day, and hopefully we can keep it up there.”
Ross Chastain turned in his best qualifying effort on an oval track this season with a fourth-place qualifying effort; his previous best was a fifth-place effort at Nashville, and Ryan Blaney clocked in fifth-fastest in the session in his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
The top nine drivers in qualifying were NASCAR Cup Series Playoff contenders.
William Byron will start sixth, while Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, and Austin Cindric were the other Playoff drivers to secure top-10 starting spots.
Zane Smith, the driver of the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford, was the top non-Playoff driver in the session as he qualified 10th.
Here is where the other seven Playoff drivers qualified for Sunday’s race at Gateway: Josh Berry (12th), Joey Logano (13th), Bubba Wallace (14th), Austin Dillon (15th), Shane van Gisbergen (18th), Chase Elliott (19th), and Alex Bowman (25th).
