Denny Hamlin edges Kyle Larson for Dover pole

Hamlin set the early benchmark in qualifying at 166.984mph and no one seemed to be able to get close to him. 

Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. gave it a proper shot, but still came a full tenth shy as he sat on the provisional front row.

The other JGR playoff driver, Kyle Busch, struggled on his lap and found himself fighting the car to stay on the bottom. He would qualify 18th, the worst of all remaining title contenders.

Kyle Larson seemed to be on a flyer that could unseat Hamlin, but lost it out of the final corner and came up just 0.003 seconds short of pole. For Larson, losing the pole to Hamlin of all drivers made it hurt just a bit more.

"I felt like I ran a good lap ... Three thousandths of a second when you're going that fast isn't much so, wish I was on the pole," he told NBCSN. "I told Denny a few days I was going to get the pole so for him to be a little bit quicker than me is frustrating (laughs).

"Qualifying here is so much fun, especially when it's cooler like this. We're not all the way out of the gas ever, so that was a lot of fun."

Brad Keselowski was the final car on track and took the unique approach of utilizing his first lap as an extension of sorts of his warmup lap, but it did not pay off. He slotted in 16th. 

Truex ended up third, Kevin Harvick fourth and last week's winner Chase Elliott fifth.

The pole comes in Hamlin's 500th career start and is the 32nd of his career.

"I got 'em!," a smiling Hamlin told NBCSN in reference to Larson. "I'm so happy I beat him. To have that lap there, that was a really good lap for us. I knew it was really solid and about nine tenths quicker than we ran yesterday.

"So proud of this whole FedEx team for giving me a car that obviously was super fast. This is probably as optimistic as I've been going into a Dover race simply because we've really dedicated so much time to working on my technique around this race track and figuring out what I need to do to be succesful and still learning, even at start 500."

Cla	#	Driver		Manufacturer	Time	Gap	Mph
1	11	Denny Hamlin		Toyota	21.559		166.984
2	42	Kyle Larson		Chevrolet	21.562	0.003	166.960
3	19	Martin Truex Jr.		Toyota	21.660	0.101	166.205
4	4	Kevin Harvick		Ford	21.687	0.128	165.998
5	9	Chase Elliott		Chevrolet	21.695	0.136	165.937
6	24	William Byron		Chevrolet	21.721	0.162	165.738
7	10	Aric Almirola		Ford	21.730	0.171	165.670
8	20	Erik Jones		Toyota	21.737	0.178	165.616
9	1	Kurt Busch		Chevrolet	21.767	0.208	165.388
10	12	Ryan Blaney		Ford	21.781	0.222	165.282
11	48	Jimmie Johnson		Chevrolet	21.782	0.223	165.274
12	88	Alex Bowman		Chevrolet	21.838	0.279	164.850
13	21	Paul Menard		Ford	21.858	0.299	164.699
14	22	Joey Logano		Ford	21.859	0.30	164.692
15	41	Daniel Suarez		Ford	21.866	0.307	164.639
16	2	Brad Keselowski		Ford	21.897	0.338	164.406
17	14	Clint Bowyer		Ford	21.901	0.342	164.376
18	18	Kyle Busch		Toyota	21.932	0.373	164.144
19	17	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.		Ford	21.975	0.416	163.823
20	95	Matt DiBenedetto		Toyota	21.977	0.418	163.808
21	38	David Ragan		Ford	22.031	0.472	163.406
22	37	Chris Buescher		Chevrolet	22.088	0.529	162.984
23	36	Matt Tifft		Ford	22.113	0.554	162.800
24	6	Ryan Newman		Ford	22.127	0.568	162.697
25	13	Ty Dillon		Chevrolet	22.132	0.573	162.660
26	43	Darrell Wallace Jr.		Chevrolet	22.137	0.578	162.624
27	3	Austin Dillon		Chevrolet	22.171	0.612	162.374
28	34	Michael McDowell		Ford	22.228	0.669	161.958
29	32	Corey Lajoie		Ford	22.320	0.761	161.290
30	00	Landon Cassill		Chevrolet	22.325	0.766	161.254
31	8	Daniel Hemric		Chevrolet	22.363	0.804	160.980
32	47	Ryan Preece		Chevrolet	22.401	0.842	160.707
33	51	B.J. McLeod		Ford	22.721	1.162	158.444
34	15	Ross Chastain		Chevrolet	22.874	1.315	157.384
35	52	J.J. Yeley		Ford	23.023	1.464	156.365
36	27	Joe Nemechek		Chevrolet	23.061	1.502	156.108
37	54	Garrett Smithley		Chevrolet	23.333	1.774	154.288
38	77	Reed Sorenson		Chevrolet	23.359	1.80	154.116