Qualifying report

NASCAR Cup Martinsville starting lineup: Denny Hamlin wins pole, SVG impresses

Hamlin and Byron will share the front row, but there are some very interesting names right behind them

The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Denny Hamlin will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday's NASCAR Cup race at Martinsville Speedway. The Virginia native now has five poles at the half-mile short track, and 49 total in his career.

"The car is good today," said Hamlin. "We did a lot of really good things in practice. I was hoping to get somewhere in that top eight for qualifying, but just really concentrated on hitting my marks and doing what I needed to do. I thought the track had .20 in it and if I had to do it all over again, I thought I could. But it was good enough."

The drivers are also dealing with more horsepower this weekend, and Hamlin agreed that "it will change some things. I certainly felt like in practice that you had to be very sensitive to your inputs. There's going to be good handling cars, and there's going to be bad. You get to the back of the bad handling cars (as the leader), are you good enough and versatile enough to get around them? That's going to be the difference."

Watch: Denny Hamlin rockets to fifth career Martinsville pole

William Byron will join Hamlin on the front row, followed by Josh Berry, Ty Gibbs, and Shane van Gisbergen. For SVG, fifth will now stand as his best oval qualifying effort so far in the Cup Series.

Logano led the early portion of qualifying as he hoped to put a disastrous Darlington race behind him. He remained in control for the first half of the session, but Penske-aligned Berry in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford eclipsed him.

Van Gisbergen ended up splitting the leading Fords first, impressively slotting in just 0.005s behind Berry. No one toppled Berry until Hamlin went out, lapping the half-mile in 19.275s. Byron was the closest to Hamlin in the end, but he was still over half a tenth behind Hamlin's fast lap.

Martinsville Starting Lineup

cla	#	driver	manufacturer	time	gap	mph
1	11	Denny Hamlin	Toyota	19.275		98.241
2	24	William Byron	Chevrolet	19.331	0.056	97.957
3	21	Josh Berry	Ford	19.334	0.059	97.941
4	54	Ty Gibbs	Toyota	19.338	0.063	97.921
5	97	Shane van Gisbergen	Chevrolet	19.339	0.064	97.916
6	2	Austin Cindric	Ford	19.351	0.076	97.855
7	77	Carson Hocevar	Chevrolet	19.363	0.088	97.795
8	45	Tyler Reddick	Toyota	19.376	0.101	97.729
9	22	Joey Logano	Ford	19.389	0.114	97.664
10	9	Chase Elliott	Chevrolet	19.392	0.117	97.649
11	20	Christopher Bell	Toyota	19.398	0.123	97.618
12	12	Ryan Blaney	Ford	19.429	0.154	97.463
13	5	Kyle Larson	Chevrolet	19.432	0.157	97.448
14	38	Zane Smith	Ford	19.444	0.169	97.387
15	23	Bubba Wallace	Toyota	19.445	0.170	97.382
16	17	Chris Buescher	Ford	19.446	0.171	97.377
17	60	Ryan Preece	Ford	19.453	0.178	97.342
18	1	Ross Chastain	Chevrolet	19.457	0.182	97.322
19	43	Erik Jones	Toyota	19.486	0.211	97.177
20	71	Michael McDowell	Chevrolet	19.495	0.220	97.133
21	48	Justin Allgaier	Chevrolet	19.503	0.228	97.093
22	7	Daniel Suarez	Chevrolet	19.508	0.233	97.068
23	6	Brad Keselowski	Ford	19.518	0.243	97.018
24	41	Cole Custer	Chevrolet	19.530	0.255	96.959
25	88	Connor Zilisch	Chevrolet	19.536	0.261	96.929
26	35	Riley Herbst	Toyota	19.561	0.286	96.805
27	19	Chase Briscoe	Toyota	19.562	0.287	96.800
28	16	AJ Allmendinger	Chevrolet	19.578	0.303	96.721
29	34	Todd Gilliland	Ford	19.588	0.313	96.671
30	3	Austin Dillon	Chevrolet	19.625	0.350	96.489
31	4	Noah Gragson	Ford	19.650	0.375	96.366
32	42	John Hunter Nemechek	Toyota	19.664	0.389	96.298
33	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr	Chevrolet	19.676	0.401	96.239
34	8	Kyle Busch	Chevrolet	19.705	0.430	96.097
35	51	Cody Ware	Chevrolet	19.719	0.444	96.029
36	10	Ty Dillon	Chevrolet	19.760	0.485	95.830
37	33	Austin Hill	Chevrolet	19.921	0.646	95.055