Denny Hamlin will lead the field to green for the second straight week, upending Kyle Larson and his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe for this weekend’s pole at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
Hamlin laid down a lap of 139.190 mph and outran Larson by two hundredths of a second.
Playoff drivers took home nine of the first 10 starting positions, with Ross Chastain starting fourth and Ryan Blaney rounding out the top five. William Byron will start outside of Blaney in sixth, with Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell lining up behind them. Austin Cindric will roll off ninth with Zane Smith being the only non-playoff driver in the top 10.
Josh Berry, Joey Logano, Bubba Wallace and Austin Dillon all qualified next to one another, and will start tomorrow’s race from 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th respectively.
It’ll be another claw to the front for Chase Elliott, Shane van Gisbergen and Alex Bowman. SVG and Elliott could only muster 18th- and 19th-place efforts while Bowman had another miserable qualifying run and will roll off 25th.
The Enjoy Illinois 300 will air tomorrow on USA Network at 3 p.m. ET.
Thomas is in his first year covering NASCAR at Frontstretch. A Bay Area NASCAR fan for over 15+ years, he found his love for the sport through Jeff Gordon.
Thomas has enjoyed several trips to Sonoma Raceway in his time and currently covers college football in the Bay Area, also writing about the California Golden Bears.