DOVER, Del. \u2014 Denny Hamlin overcame an eventful qualifying run Saturday to win the pole for the NASCAR All-Star Race at Dover Motor Speedway, while Zane Smith\u2019s No. 38 team dominated pit road to capture the Mechanix Wear Pit Crew Challenge.<\/p>\n
Hamlin, driving the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, posted a total qualifying time of 109.298 seconds at 98.812 mph to earn the top starting position for Sunday\u2019s exhibition race at the Monster Mile.<\/p>\n
It marks Hamlin\u2019s second career All-Star Race pole \u2014 his first since 2015, when he went on to win the race from the top spot.<\/p>\n
The run did not come easily.<\/p>\n
Hamlin spun during his warm-up lap before beginning his timed effort, causing damage to his car and forcing a quick recovery. Despite the setback, he still produced the fastest overall performance of the session.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite eventful for sure,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cI was trying to get an extra rep there on the bottom \u2026 and I just spun out. I didn\u2019t think I was being that aggressive, but spun out. At that point, just tried to minimize the damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident left the No. 11 car with splitter and underbody damage, along with flat-spotted tires. Hamlin said he simply committed to pushing as hard as possible once the timed run began \u2014 and it was enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cHats off to the team,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re the ones that keep you in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlin also praised the unique All-Star qualifying format, which combines timed laps with a mandatory four-tire pit stop, putting both drivers and crews under pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely is a team effort \u2026 that puts the spotlight on everybody that\u2019s involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brad Keselowski qualified second alongside Hamlin on the front row, followed by Erik Jones, Ross Chastain and William Byron rounding out the top five.<\/p>\n
While Hamlin claimed the pole, the top pit crew honors belonged to Zane Smith\u2019s No. 38 team. The crew delivered a session-best 12.612-second four-tire stop to win the Mechanix Wear Pit Crew Challenge, earning a $100,000 bonus and the first pit selection for Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
The performance gives Smith\u2019s team a significant strategic advantage despite the driver qualifying 25th in the combined format.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s session featured multiple incidents during the high-pressure format.<\/p>\n
Daniel Suarez suffered one of the hardest crashes after his right-front wheel detached exiting pit road, sending his car into the outside wall in Turn 1. He was evaluated and released from the infield care center.<\/p>\n
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also spun multiple times down the frontstretch after losing control exiting Turn 4, preventing his crew from completing their pit stop portion of qualifying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOVER, Del. \u2014 Denny Hamlin overcame an eventful qualifying run Saturday to win the pole for the NASCAR…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-674429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}