Denny Hamlin wins pole award for Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway

Is Denny Hamlin back on the right path? The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was fastest in qualifying, picking up the pole award. Hamlin will lead the NASCAR Cup Series to green on Sunday afternoon.

Denny Hamlin had to break the hopes and dreams of Josh Berry to win the pole. It looked like Berry was on his way to his first career pole award in the Cup Series and then, it was gone.

This is the second pole award of the season for Hamlin. His first came at Phoenix. After three weeks of P38, P24, and P24, this is a welcome sight for the 11 team.

Denny Hamlin puts the No. 11 car ON THE POLE in Nashville.

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Actually, Denny Hamlin took the pole from Christopher Bell. With how the new qualifying format works, the fastest from Group A and fastest from Group B get to start on the front row, with the fastest of the two winning the pole.

Since Bell and Hamlin were both in Group B, Bell was pushed to the second row, Berry remained on the outside of Row 1.

NASCAR has each row after the first row divided by groups. Group A on the outside, Group B on the inside. While NASCAR keeps trying to reinvent the wheel, fans just want a simple qualifying session.

However, that might be too much to ask for in this case. For whatever reason, Cup Series qualifying has to be as complicated as possible. Meanwhile, Xfinity and Truck Series teams do just fine with single-round sessions.

All of that aside, it’s going to be a fun race on Sunday. This track will be hot, slick, and will give these drivers a handful. Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher, and Austin Cindric make up the rest of the top-10.

Denny Hamlin trying to kick recent woes aside

Denny Hamlin really needed this pole award. Finishes in the last three weeks have not been up to par. Ever since that engine issue on Lap 1 at Sonoma, it’s been struggles for the 11 team.

That is, until qualifying at Nashville Superspeedway. It might be the spark that gets this 11 team back to dominating how they were just a few short weeks ago.

“No matter what, our speed’s always been there,” Hamlin said to media after qualifying. “Even though the results don’t show that, we feel very confident every time we go to the racetrack, we’re going to contend to be one of the fastest cars. Then it’s a race on ourselves to execute properly and me making sure I do my job behind the wheel. Yeah, it’s a bummer because you go from a really good points position to then, you know, three in a row of less than ideal results.

“Then you know, you come back to the next week and you pretend that none of that stuff every happened and you sit on the pole and hopefully go out there and dominate tomorrow. That’s how our sport is, it’s the ebbs and flows, and you always – every team has these swells of performance that, you know, they don’t get the results that they deserve.”

Denny Hamlin on pole, Josh Berry next to him. Sunday is going to be a hot and fun afternoon of Cup Series racing in Music City.