Denny Hamlin earned pole position for the NASCAR Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway, securing his 52nd career pole and his fourth of the 2026 season.
It was a nail-bitter for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, with Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports nearly matching Hamlin on his own qualifying lap. He will start on the outside of the front row, just 0.001s slower than Hamlin.
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The RFK Racing duo of Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski will start third and fourth, respectively. It’s then a trio of JGR drivers with Ty Gibbs fifth, Christopher Bell sixth, and Chase Briscoe seventh.
Bubba Wallace, Chase Elliott, and William Byron filled out the remainder of the top ten.
“I gotta be honest with you, I got extremely lucky,” said Hamlin, who remarked that his goal was P12 due to his early run in the order. “Anyone that goes out right now beats me. We got lucky these last 12 guys just got stuck in the sun. The track is very temperature sensitive. It gets a little bit of sun on it and it slows way up. I think we got really fortunate there with the timing of that, and we hit our lap pretty decent considering when we went out.”
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Hamlin enters this race as the new championship leader, one point ahead of Tyler Reddick in the regular season standings. Reddick will start 13th on Sunday.
Qualifying recap
With storms approaching, qualifying got underway with J.J. Yeley as the first driver out on track. Michael McDowell did not take part after three inspection failures, which also means he will have to serve a pass-through during the race.
Herbst led the way in Friday practice, and he set the early benchmark in qualifying at 30.576s. He remained P1 until 23XI Racing teammate Reddick toppled him with s 30.523s lap.
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Cody Ware got into the wall at the exit of Turn 2, and had to abandon his lap without putting up a time.
It was a Toyota party at the front, and Reddick held the lead until yet another 23XI driver went to the top with Wallace running a 30.420s. However, it did not last long as his boss went out next and bested him. Hamlin a 30.296s, and it was going to be tough for anyone to beat that lap.
As the session progressed, it was RFK Racing that had a real run at Hamlin. Keselowski got within three tenths, and Buescher was just 0.015s away from having the fastest lap.
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As the track cooled down with increased cloud cover from inclement weather approaching, speeds picked up. Several drivers had a shot at pole, and Larson was all over Hamlin, but ended up missing Hamlin’s pole lap by 0.001s as they nearly tied.
2026 NASCAR Cup Chicagoland Starting Lineup
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