Denny Hamlin won the first superspeedway pole of his career and will lead the field to green at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday.

Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner and two-time winner at Talladega, turned a lap at 180.642 mph in Saturday qualifying to put his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the top starting spot.

“I was well aware that I’ve never gotten a superspeedway pole,” Hamlin said of the statistic. He has won 36 poles in his career.

Hamlin bumped Aric Almirola in a Ford from Stewart-Haas Racing and Ty Gibbs, Hamlin’s teammate at JGR. Chase Briscoe of SHR qualified fourth and was followed by Ryan Blaney of Team Penske. JGR drivers Christopher Bell and and Martin Truex were sixth and seventh, while reigning Cup champion Joey Logano of Penske was eighth.

Kyle Larson, winner last week at Martinsville Speedway, qualified ninth for Hendrick Motorsports and was the only Chevrolet driver to crack the top 10. Chris Buescher in a Ford from Roush Fenway Racing rounded out the top 10.

Ross Chastain, winner of this race a year ago, qualified 23rd for Trackhouse Racing. Chase Elliott, the Talladega winner in October who is making his second consecutive start after missing six with a broken leg, qualified 29th.

Talladega snaps a stretch of three consecutive short track races and a road course event that all drew criticism for a sub-par racing product. The road course race at Circuit of Americas in Texas was a chaotic crash-fest, and the three short track stops at Richmond, Bristol and Martinsville were lambasted for an inability for drivers to pass in NASCAR’s second-year Next Gen car.

The drivers are asking for more horsepower, tires that wear off faster and to eliminate shifting. They met with NASCAR on Saturday morning to discuss ideas for the Next Gen. The hope is that Talladega, a 2.66-mile high-speed track prone to create spectacular crashes and surprise winners, on Sunday will change the tone of the conversation permeating the sport.

“Talladega really never doesn’t deliver. It always delivers,” Logano said. “You’re not going to know who is going to win the race going down the backstretch (of the final lap). That’s why fans love it.”