Denny Hamlin’s dismal qualifying run puts him at the very back of the 38-car field. The lap was over two seconds off the pace from the pole-sitter. He immediately took the ailing No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota back to the garage with a possible powertrain issue. The hood went up and the crew quickly tried to assess the situation under the watchful eye of NASCAR officials.
“They see a few red flags, certainly,” Hamlin told NBC Sports. “They’ll dig into it tonight, figure it out, and get it fixed for tomorrow.”
Hamlin will have to pass the entire field on Sunday, but he is confident they’ll be able to “battle to the front. Our Camry is going to be pretty good tomorrow. We feel pretty good about what we brought, just gotta get to the finish.”
Michael McDowell, who had zero poles in the first 16 years of his career, earned his fifth of the 2024 season at Atlanta on Saturday. Ford drivers qualified 1st – 5th, continuing a trend where the blue oval dominates the time charts at drafting tracks. Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney will line up alongside McDowell on the front row as the highest-qualifying playoff driver.
Watch: Michael McDowell sweeps poles at Atlanta in 2024
“I’m just so proud of everybody at Front Row,” said McDowell. “We knew we had a shot, based on Daytona, but to get this Mustang its fifth pole of the year — we’re trying to win the most poles. Just keep fighting hard, but really proud of the effort.”
He later added: “The good thing for us was in the race our car raced really well and sometimes you trim them out and you get a lot of speed and you’ll get into the race and it’ll just be a handful, but we led a lot of laps, had a really fast car. I thought we had one of the better driving cars, so I don’t feel like we’re compromising anything going into the race with the speed that we have, and it was the same a couple weeks ago in Daytona. I felt like we had one of the fastest cars there, so it’s just about executing and being there at the end and giving yourself a shot at trying to win the race.”
Todd Gilliland will start third, Josh Berry fourth, and Austin Cindric fifth. Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, William Byron, and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top-ten.
Beyond the first five rows, here’s where the playoff drivers are starting: Alex Bowman 11th; Harrison Burton 12th; Chase Elliott 16th; Brad Keselowski 19th; Ty Gibbs 20th; Martin Truex Jr. 22nd; Tyler Reddick 23rd; Christopher Bell 26th; Daniel Suarez 30th; Denny Hamlin 38th.
The first stage at Atlanta is only 60 laps, so a green-flag stop won’t be necessary. Because of this, starting positions will be critical in collecting valuable stage points, but only six of the 16 playoff drivers advanced into the final round of qualifying.
