Hamlin wins pole in Phoenix

Denny Hamlin

Denny Hamlin won his third pole of the season and second career mark at Phoenix International Raceway when he topped the charts in qualifying on Friday at the Avondale, Arizona track.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver led the final round of qualifying with a best speed of 142.113 mph. Hamlin, who currently holds a share of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead, is hoping to pick up a second career win at the 1-mile track to lock himself into the Championship Round race at Homestead-Miami Speedway next Sunday.

Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski was just off Hamlin's pace, pulling in second at 142.079. Kevin Harvick, who was part of the post-race scrum following the event at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this week that involved Keselowski, was third at 141.995.

Joey Logano set a track qualifying record in the opening round at 142.141, but ran a clip of 141.794 in the second round to qualify fourth. The previous record (139.384) was set by Keselowski in February.
Matt Kenseth (141.794, 5th) and Jeff Gordon (141.665, 7th) were the other two Chase drivers in the top 12.

Carl Edwards (140.488, 13th) and Ryan Newman (140.127, 20th) were the only two Chase drivers not to advance to the final round of qualifying.

Last week's winner at Texas Motor Speedway, Jimmie Johnson, will start 15th after turning a lap at 140.356, followed closely by teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., in 16th, at 140.285.

The Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 in Sunday, with coverage at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Ground Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Starting Position: 1st
Are you surprised the lap time you ran stuck and you got the pole?
"I definitely didn't think it was, but I was really hoping to back up what we ran the previous run. I hit my marks perfectly and the adjustments just kept getting better and better. Darian (Grubb, crew chief) and the whole FedEx Ground team kept making my Camry better. That allowed me to drive harder and harder. That's a big surprise."

How was the car in practice and how did it improve in qualifying?
"A good day. We just kept getting our car a little bit better with every run today and in the qualifying run. Definitely out of the blue from my perspective — didn't think we had a pole-winning car by any means. If you were watching the TV, I definitely thought the top-eight or better would be a huge bonus. That was a little unexpected, but showed us that we have speed in our car. We just have to figure out how to get it optimized for 312 laps around this race track on Sunday."

How much confidence does the pole give you for Sunday's race?
"A lot. Really a day like today just gives you a huge momentum boost going into not only Sunday, but tomorrow. We know what my pit crew can do and now we give them the number one pit stall — a lot of big bonuses there that gets included with getting this pole. Not only that, but it also shows us that our cars have got some speed. We now have to figure out what we need to do on our race setup to run speed like that for a substantial amount of time. The good thing that I saw was that we kept doing it on older tires and older and older tires our car kept getting faster. That's typically what you want around this race track. Even though we've had struggles here these last couple runs, I feel like we're starting to come on to our own here, especially in the Chase. Really these Chase races when you're in a championship battle is always a little different as well. Last year we were way back in the points after missing some races. 2012 was a different beast. Really I'm excited to run on Sunday and hopefully lead some laps and establish ourselves early."

Will you aim for the 11th place finish or better Sunday to lock into the Chase or gamble to win?
"I think the competition level is just too close and tight to be able to think that you're going to be able to coast to an 11th place finish. Nowadays the difference between 11th and third and 20th is not that much. You've got to go all out every single lap and fight for every position on restarts. From my standpoint, there is no backing into this thing and coasting our way to Homestead. We have to go out there and perform at a high level or else we're not going to make it. There are too many other cars that are too good for us to think that we're just going to ride around and take our spot."

Where did you find the speed for qualifying?
"My second run and third run I just hit every mark just perfectly. I knew when I hooked around the bottom and got back to the gas quick that I did everything I could to maximize. The first run I couldn't quite see good enough into turn one to make sure I was dead on and I think we were 13th or something like that and that's kind of realistically where I thought I was going to be. I'd seen with cycles on tires that guys were getting a little bit faster and even though we weren't on scuffs in practice that for whatever reason I just hit the marks perfectly those last two runs. That means more than any crew chief can adjust with a track bar or wedge or anything like that with adjustments. You're making sure you hit your marks means more in time than any of that."

How do you like this Chase format?
"I thought that this was the best thing that happened in a long time. It's going to be around for a while. Even though some of the better teams throughout the entire year will probably get eliminated this weekend, other teams that hadn't performed great all year could possibly be moving on, you still have to go through the due process of making it all the way to the end. Just because you have the best record throughout the regular season in any other sport does not guarantee you to be in the championship match up. You have to go through all the games before that. Our team has done a good job of grinding our way through this. We've got some good to average finishes throughout this, we haven't beat ourselves with bad finishes and it's kept us in it. Now we have an opportunity to — if we hit on something here or in Homestead we could win a championship. I think that this is what this planned format was formed for — it was formed for excitement. We've seen that every single week. This weekend will be no exception and I'm sure next week will be no exception as well. At this time of the year over these last few years, we've been talking about it's a two-person race and now we have eight people with a legitimate shot at making it."

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