Nascar Race Today

With a speed eclipsing the previous track-record, Denny Hamlin won the pole position in qualifying for Sunday's NASCAR race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Denny Hamlin wasn't on the track much during qualifying at Bristol Motor Speedway, but when he was he made it count winning the pole for Sunday's Food City 500.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver ran all of three laps Friday, but his lap of 129.991 mph was 0.003 second faster than second-place qualifier Brad Keselowski and broke the previous track-record set by teammate Kyle Busch a year ago.

Hamlin's first pole of the season and the 18th of his career also snapped the dominance Team Penske had shown in NASCAR's new knockout-style qualifying format, which allows multiple drivers on the track at once and incorporates eliminations. Keselowski and teammate Joey Logano had swept the front row the previous two weeks.

Logano qualified fourth and will share the second row with third-place qualifier Matt Kenseth. Marcos Ambrose, Jeff Gordon, Busch, Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne completed the top 10.

Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards, the only other drivers to advance to the elimination round, qualified 11th and 12th, respectively.

The session was without incident days following NASCAR's decision to ban drivers from circling the track slowly during qualifying to cool their engines. Teams are now permitted to use cooling units on pit road.

Sprint Cup Series points leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. qualified 14th. Other notables: Austin Dillon (26th), Kevin Harvick (27th), Danica Patrick (36th) and Tony Stewart (37th).

Patrick was one of six drivers who made crashed in the 90-minute practice session earlier in the day. She along with Justin Allgaier, Kyle Busch and Greg Biffle all were forced to go to backup cars.

David Reutimann and Dave Blaney failed to qualify.