Bob Pockrass, NASCAR 5y

Denny Hamlin, winless in 2018, takes pole at Homestead

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Denny Hamlin is looking to extend a streak of winning at least once every season, and he upstaged the NASCAR Cup Series championship contenders in qualifying Friday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Hamlin, who has won a race in each of his 12 seasons but is winless in 2018 and has announced this will be his last race paired with crew chief Mike Wheeler, won the pole by 0.043 seconds over Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch.

"Overall I'm pleased with the effort today, and the guys did a good job," Busch said.

Busch had the best run of the four championship contenders. Martin Truex Jr. will start third, Joey Logano will start fourth and Kevin Harvick will start 12th.

The pole sitter gets the first choice of pit-stall selection.

"That's probably too far [to ask], but it would sure be nice," Busch said. "I think that if you're not in the No. 1 pit box, [stalls] 2 through 40 are the same."

Hamlin indicated he likely will take the best pit stall for himself when they are selected Saturday morning. He said last year, fellow Toyota driver Truex asked for the favor after Hamlin had won the pole, and Hamlin's team declined.

"To be honest with you, my pit crew is a second slower than Kyle's," Hamlin said. "Everything is earned, nothing is given. With us having the No. 1 pit stall, none of the other [championship] competitors will have it. So I don't know. It's a discussion [to be had].

"With the pressure always to win, you've got to do everything you can to win."

Hamlin entered Homestead winless in the 2013 season and won that race. That is a motivating factor as well as the pending split with his good friend Wheeler, who guided him to the 2016 Daytona 500 victory in their first race together.

Hamlin wouldn't comment on who would be his crew chief next year. Leavine Family Racing, which is switching to Toyota after this season and will be a JGR affiliate, has declined to answer questions in recent weeks on whether Wheeler will become Matt DiBenedetto's crew chief in 2019, as has been rumored.

"Winning my first with him was awesome, and it would be awesome to cap it off in the end," Hamlin said. "Once we got knocked out of the playoffs [after the first round], it was obviously the No. 1 priority in this race team was to get a win."

Hamlin said his goal for the race was to win with teammate Busch second.

The top finisher Sunday among the four championship finalists will win the title.

None of the four seemed especially thrilled or worried about their starting spots.

"It was a good day," Truex said. "[It was a] great effort by the guys."

Harvick started fifth when he won the title in 2014, but went from starting 13th to finishing second in 2015.

"It's not that big a deal if we can get our car driving right for Sunday," Harvick said. "We didn't qualify well here last year, either, and hadn't really drove well in qualifying trim all day today."

Qualifying setups are different than race setups, where cars are set up to make much longer than one-lap runs that are done in qualifying.

"I don't think a whole bunch transfers over," Logano said. "I think everyone was just tuned in for one lap today."

In addition to Hamlin, the other non-championship-contending driver in the top five was Brad Keselowski, who will start fourth.

Teams will get two practices Saturday to prepare for the 267-lap, 400-mile race.

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