CUP: Hamlin Captures Brickyard Pole

Sprint Cup

CUP: Hamlin Captures Brickyard Pole

Denny Hamlin won his first Brickyard 400 pole…

Tom Jensen | Posted July 28, 2012 Indianapolis, IN

Denny Hamlin won the pole for tomorrow’s Crown Royal Presents The Curtiss Shaver 400 at the Brickyard.

Hamlin set the pace after putting down a lap of 182.763 mph in his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, aided greatly by a cloud that came over Indianapolis Motor Speedway and cooled the track during his qualifying lap.

“This a great qualifying effort obviously, but we feel like we have a great car for tomorrow, said Hamlin, who won his second pole of the year and 11th in 243 career starts. “… Usually when we qualify well, we race well.”

Hamlin, like the rest of the drivers, has the Brickyard high on his list of tracks to win.

“You don't want one of NASCAR's most prestigious races to be at one of your bad race tracks, and so I feel like this is one of our strong race tracks with our team, even though stats-wise it may not show that,” said Hamlin. “I feel like when we come here, we can win every single time. You ask me that about a couple other tracks, I would say no. This is very, very high up on my list of tracks to want to win. I consider it as high as the Daytona 500 personally, so this is a great start to our weekend knowing we have the number one pit stall, we have obviously a fast car, and I have a great pit crew that's going to hopefully keep me out front all day. All those things put together leads to success on Sunday, and I think we've got a good start to that.”

Carl Edwards, in his first race with new crew chief Chad Norris, had an excellent lap as well, running 181.984 mph in his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford. “This track is just so temperature sensitive right now,” said Edwards, who qualified second.

“That was a really good lap for us,” said Edwards. “I am just proud of everyone for coming together and working together. Everyone at the shop, Chad Norris, Bob Osborne, all the engineers and everyone here at the track who said, ‘Alright, let’s put everything we can into this for the next seven weeks.’ I know this is just the first lap of our run toward the Chase but that is a good lap.”

Joey Logano made it two JGR Toyotas in the top three, as he qualified 181.756 mph.

“It's really tricky around here,” said Logano. “I felt like we had a decent lap in our Dollar General Camry. The car wasn't quite perfect, but we've been working on the thing really hard. We didn't unload very good. We've been working hard and making improvements with it."

Aric Almirola was fourth in a Richard Petty Motorsports Ford, followed by Greg Biffle in a second Roush entry.

The second five was Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, Paul Menard, Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.

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