Denny Hamlin's disastrous qualifying run leaves him at the underside of the 38-car field. He immediately takes the ailing No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to the garage with a possible driveline issue. The hood is popped, and the crew quickly tries to evaluate the situation under the watchful eye of NASCAR officials.
“They’re definitely seeing some red flags,” Hamlin told NBC Sports. “They’ll get to it tonight, figure it out and fix it for tomorrow.”
Hamlin may have to pass the whole field on Sunday, but he's confident they'll give you the chance to “fight for the front. Our Camry will be pretty good tomorrow. We feel pretty good about what we brought home, we just have to get to the finish line.”
Michael McDowell, who has no poles in the primary 16 years of his profession, earned his fifth pole of the 2024 season at Atlanta on Saturday. Ford drivers qualified 1-5, continuing a trend by which the blue oval dominates the timesheets at draft tracks. Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney will line up with McDowell on the front row as the driving force with the very best playoff qualifier.
Watch: Michael McDowell Takes Pole Position at Atlanta 2024
“I’m so proud of everyone in Front Row,” McDowell said. “We knew we had a chance, based on Daytona, but to get that Mustang its fifth pole of the year – we’re trying to get the most poles. Just keep fighting, but really proud of the effort.”
He later added: “The good thing for us was that in the race our car was racing really well and sometimes you cut them and get a lot of speed and you get into the race and it's just a handful, but we were leading a lot of laps, we had a really fast car. I thought we had one of the better running cars, so I don't feel like we're losing anything in the race with the speed that we have, and it was the same thing a few weeks ago in Daytona. I thought we had one of the fastest cars, so it's just about executing and being there to the end and giving ourselves a chance to win the race.”
Todd Gilliland will start third, Josh Berry fourth and Austin Cindric fifth. Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, William Byron and Chase Briscoe rounded out the highest ten.
In addition to the primary five rows, listed below are the playoff drivers starting within the grid: Alex Bowman eleventh; Harrison Burton twelfth; Chase Elliott sixteenth; Brad Keselowski nineteenth; Ty Gibbs twentieth; Martin Truex Jr. twenty second; Tyler Reddick twenty third; Christopher Bell twenty sixth; Daniel Suarez thirtieth; Denny Hamlin thirty eighth.
The first stage in Atlanta is just 60 laps long, so there will probably be no green-flag pit stops. As such, grid positions will probably be key to earning worthwhile stage points, but only six of the 16 play-off drivers made it to the ultimate round of qualifying.
