Denny Hamlin on Nashville Pole after Weather Cancellation; Bell Fastest in Practice

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

LEBANON, Tenn. – It’s been a Joe Gibbs Racing kind of day in Nashville.

Denny Hamlin came out on the positive end of an untimely visit from Mother Nature when qualifying for Sunday’s Cracker Barrel 400 was washed out by a rain shower, cancelling qualifying and setting the field by the rule book.

Hamlin secured the pole and will be joined by points leader Tyler Reddick on the front row. Last weekend’s winner Daniel Suarez will start third, followed by Christopher Bell, and Kyle Larson rounding out the top-five starters.

The remainder of the top-10 went to Ty Gibbs, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Joey Logano, and Shane van Gisbergen.

With qualifying washed out, NASCAR elected to pivot to a 45-minute, all-cars practice session for drivers and teams to get some track time on the resin-treated concrete surface with the new higher horsepower, low downforce package in place on ovals less that 1.5 miles, which includes Nashville.

When all was said and done, Bell and his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led the way with a lap of 29.802 seconds, 160.660 mph, just ahead of Ross Chastain’s Chevrolet.

Hamlin finished practice with the third fastest time, along with Gibbs, Reddick, A.J. Allmendinger, Larson, Blaney, Chase Briscoe, and Byron as the top-10 on the time sheet.

“No real surprises. Obviously just a lot slower corner speeds than kind of what we’ve been running here,” Hamlin said of getting track time with the new package.

“So, it’s a little getting used to for that, but nothing too surprising really. So yeah, we, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Definitely. Traffic is a big thing for sure until the track widens out, which it should tomorrow.

“…Definitely the first few laps [of practice] were super important to understand what we had and what we need to work on for tomorrow. So, I definitely wanted at least a few laps of practice. Got a good 50 lap run there, still have some work to do balance wise, but the car has speed so we can fix it from there.”

The Cracker Barrel 400 is scheduled for 7:00 pm ET Sunday on Amazon Prime. Blaney is the defending race winner.