Carson Hocevar, who hails from Portage, MI, was so close to securing the pole position for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at his home track, Michigan International Speedway, that he could taste it. Unfourtunately, the taste in Hocevar’s mouth spoiled as Denny Hamlin, the final car to go on track in qualifying, bumped him from the pole position.
Hamlin, as he had done 49 other times in his illustrious NASCAR Cup Series career, rocketed to the top of the speed charts in qualifying, ans will lead the field to the green flag in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan.
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In practice earlier in the afternoon, Hamlin suffered a flat left rear tire, which led to his No. 11 team needing to repair the underwing strakes on his No. 11 Toyota. Due to the damage, Hamlin wasn’t sure he’d be able to contend for a pole on Saturday.
“They did a great job, accounting for the damage on the bottom side. They rebalanced it, felt like they did a good job. I mean, it was a handful. It was all I wanted, certainly. But hats off to this whole National Debt Relief team, yeah, that was surprising,” Hamlin said.
Hocevar came up just shy of a win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race earlier in the day at Michigan, and as the qualifying session drew to a close, he began to realize how much he truly wanted that pole, which made it all the more crushing when it was snatched from him at the very end of the session.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a testament to these guys. They do a really good job. They’re building really fast race cars. I would have loved to have that there,” Hocevar said choking back the emotions. “But yeah, third in the truck race, second in Cup qualifying, so hopefully that’s just a trend there. But I would have loved that one.”
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Tyler Reddick, winner of five races already this season and holder of the series point lead, will roll from the starting grid in the third position in Sunday’s race, and he’ll be joined by Ty Gibbs, the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
Chase Briscoe rounded out the top-five qualifiers.
FireKeepers Casino 400 Starting Lineup
1. 11-Denny Hamlin
2. 77-Carson Hocevar
3. 45-Tyler Reddick
4. 54-Ty Gibbs
5. 19-Chase Briscoe
6. 9-Chase Elliott
7. 5-Kyle Larson
8. 20-Christopher Bell
9. 24-William Byron
10. 43-Erik Jones
11. 7-Daniel Suarez
12. 35-Riley Herbst
13. 23-Bubba Wallace
14. 17-Chris Buescher
15. 41-Cole Custer
16. 38-Zane Smith
17. 42-John Hunter Nemechek
18. 22-Joey Logano
19. 12-Ryan Blaney
20. 71-Michael McDowell
21. 3-Austin Dillon
22. 4-Noah Gragson
23. 47-Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
24. 10-Ty Dillon
25. 16-AJ Allmendinger
26. 6-Brad Keselowski
27. 60-Ryan Preece
28. 33-Austin Hill
29. 48-Alex Bowman
30. 97-Shane van Gisbergen
31. 2-Austin Cindric
32. 1-Ross Chastain
33. 51-Cody Ware
34. 88-Connor Zilisch
35. 34-Todd Gilliland
36. 44-JJ Yeley
37. 21-Josh Berry
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Hamlin Breaks Hocevar’s Heart On Path To 50th Career Cup Series Pole.
Read the full article here