NASCAR starting lineup at Homestead: Denny Hamlin on pole after rain alters schedule

Tom Gatto

NASCAR starting lineup at Homestead: Denny Hamlin on pole after rain alters schedule image

The Championship 4 will be the first four on the starting grid Sunday in the final race of the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series season.

Rain at Homestead-Miami Speedway caused NASCAR to cancel Friday's practice session and Saturday's qualifying session for the Ford EcoBoost 400 and assign starting positions based on owner points. The four drivers competing for the Cup Series title this weekend — Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch — will start in positions 1-4, respectively.

MORE: Harvick sees benefits of being a lone wolf

Hamlin claimed the pole by virtue of his victory in last week's Round of 8 race at Phoenix and his fourth-place finish at Martinsville earlier in the round. Harvick and Truex won the other Round of 8 races but Harvick was fifth at Phoenix and Truex was sixth at Texas. Second-best finish in the round is a tiebreaker, per Fox Sports' Bob Pockrass. Busch's best Round of 8 finish was second at Phoenix.

Cup teams will now practice during the time they were supposed to qualify on Saturday afternoon (2-2:55 p.m. ET).

NASCAR starting lineup at Homestead for Ford EcoBoost 400

POS. CAR NO. DRIVER
1 11 DENNY HAMLIN
2 4 KEVIN HARVICK
3 19 MARTIN TRUEX JR.
4 18 KYLE BUSCH
5 22 JOEY LOGANO
6 42 KYLE LARSON
7 12 RYAN BLANEY
8 2 BRAD KESELOWSKI
9 24 WILLIAM BYRON
10 14 CLINT BOWYER
11 9 CHASE ELLIOTT
12 88 ALEX BOWMAN
13 1 KURT BUSCH
14 10 ARIC ALMIROLA
15 6 RYAN NEWMAN
16 20 ERIK JONES
17 41 DANIEL SUAREZ
18 48 JIMMIE JOHNSON
19 21 PAUL MENARD
20 37 CHRIS BUESCHER
21 95 MATT DIBENEDETTO
22 3 AUSTIN DILLON
23 17 RICKY STENHOUSE JR.
24 13 TY DILLON
25 8 DANIEL HEMRIC
26 47 RYAN PREECE
27 43 BUBBA WALLACE
28 34 MICHAEL MCDOWELL
29 32 COREY LAJOIE
30 36 JOHN H. NEMECHEK
31 38 DAVID RAGAN
32 15 JOE NEMECHEK
33 00 LANDON CASSILL
34 51 JJ YELEY
35 77 REED SORENSON
36 27 ROSS CHASTAIN
37 96 DREW HERRING
38 52 JOSH BILICKI
39 53 BJ MCLEOD
40 66 TIMMY HILL

What time does the Homestead playoff race start?

Air time: 3 p.m. ET (green flag at approximately 3:30 p.m. ET)
TV channel: NBC

The final race of the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series season is scheduled to begin in mid-afternoon and end in the evening in South Florida. NBC will televise the race; it is the last of seven races the network will show on broadcast TV this season. As part of NBC's TV deal with NASCAR for the 2019 season, NBC was slated to show seven of the final 20 races of the season, with the other 13 scheduled to be shown on NBCSN. The network's broadcast crew consists of Rick Allen, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte in the booth, with Marty Snider, Dave Burns, Kelli Stavast and Parker Kligerman reporting from pit road.

In addition to the TV coverage on NBC, Sunday's race at Homestead is available via live stream on the NBC Sports App and NBCSports.com.

SN's Tadd Haislop contributed to this report.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.