Listen with your best Tom Carnegie voice playing in your head. With a speed of 166.984 mph, Denny Hamlin set a new track record – bettering a mark set just this May by Chase Elliott.
Qualifying up front has not been an issue for Hamlin. He now has 11 top-10 starts in his last 12 attempts. During his career, he has 17 top-10 starts in 27 races (63 percent of the time), but that has not always preceded a strong race run. Hamlin has three previous poles. He crashed twice in those races and barely finished inside the top 10 in the remaining event. Hamlin’s best finish from the pole was his eighth in 2012.
Hamlin has one other front row start and he finished 18th after doing so in 2015. The driver of the No. 11 was enthusiastic about his position, but it is almost guaranteed that he is going to lose place-differential points. After starting on one of the first five rows, he has finished better than he started only three times.
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Kyle Larson was one of the fastest drivers in practice on long runs. He thought he had a shot at the pole and was almost correct. Missing the top spot by .003 seconds, which is less than the blink of an eye, Larson is every bit the equal to Hamlin.
This is Larson’s sixth consecutive top-10 start. In those races he has scored three top-five finishes and never came home worse than 12th. This spring, he started and finished third.
Martin Truex Jr. qualified third and is undoubtedly pleased with the effort. This spring he qualified only 13th, which snapped an eight-race streak of top-10 starts. Things got worse following time trials as he was one of four drivers to fail inspection. He was forced to the back of the pack to start the race.
Undeterred by the modest showing in qualification as well as the penalty, Truex charged to the front and won the Gander RV 400. The role was reversed last spring, however; he started third and faded to 15th with crash damage.
Kevin Harvick was equal to Larson in practice and occasionally better. They took turns leading the quickest laps’ charts and we predicted after Happy Hour that they would be the favorites to earn maximum points. Harvick’s fourth-place qualification effort has done nothing to change that impression.
Harvick qualified on the first five rows in his last four Dover attempts; his last three ended with results of sixth or better.
The top four qualifiers all broke the previous track record.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Elliott and William Byron make up row three.
Elliott did not look particularly strong in practice, but one doesn’t always know what teams are working on in those sessions. In this instance, his historical record on the track takes precedence and since he has finished outside the top five only once during his career, it seems likely he will contend for another.
Aric Almirola qualified seventh to become the highest starting non-playoff driver. This is only the third time Almirola has qualified in the top 10 at Dover in 14 starts. One of his other strong qualification efforts came this spring in seventh, but he slipped to 16th at the checkers.
The remainder of the playoff contenders did not perform particularly well in time trials. Ryan Blaney qualified 10th with Alex Bowman 12th and Joey Logano 14th.
Outside the top 15, Brad Keselowski qualified 16th. Clint Bowyer will need to pick his way forward from 17th.
The worst qualifier among the playoff contenders was Kyle Busch. He got extremely loose on his first lap and scrubbed off a lot of speed. That destroyed both laps and now he needs to come from the middle of the pack in 18th. For a driver with Busch’s skill, that should not be a problem – but the playoffs have not been kind to the driver of the No. 18.
Busch made so many unforced errors in the first round of the playoffs that it’s difficult to imagine he will stay out of trouble this week. He is going to be popular among players who look primarily at his overall record and that could give you an opportunity to differentiate your lineup.
Top-10 starters, last two races:
Spring, 2019 Gander RV 400 | ||
Driver | Finish | Start |
5 | 1 | |
8 | 2 | |
3 | 3 | |
7 | 4 | |
2 | 5 | |
4 | 6 | |
16 | 7 | |
21 | 8 | |
12 | 9 | |
9 | 10 | |
Other top-10 finishers | ||
1 | 13 | |
6 | 15 | |
10 | 22 |
Fall, 2018 Gander Outdoors 400 | ||
Driver | Finish | Start |
8 | 1 | |
14 | 2 | |
6 | 2 | |
15 | 3 | |
35 | 5 | |
3 | 6 | |
5 | 7 | |
11 | 8 | |
1 | 9 | |
12 | 10 | |
Other top-10 finishers | ||
2 | 15 | |
4 | 16 | |
7 | 14 | |
9 | 21 | |
10 | 19 |
