Carson Hocevar, who hails from Portage, MI, was so close to securing the pole position for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at his home track, Michigan International Speedway, that he could taste it. Unfourtunately, the taste in Hocevar's mouth spoiled as Denny Hamlin, the final car to go on track in qualifying, bumped him from the pole position.Hamlin, as he had done 49 other times in his illustrious NASCAR Cup Series career, rocketed to the top of the speed charts in qualifying, ans will lead the field to the green flag in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan.In practice earlier in the afternoon, Hamlin suffered a flat left rear tire, which led to his No. 11 team needing to repair the underwing strakes on his No. 11 Toyota. Due to the damage, Hamlin wasn't sure he'd be able to contend for a pole on Saturday."They did a great job, accounting for the damage on the bottom side. They rebalanced it, felt like they did a good job. I mean, it was a handful. It was all I wanted, certainly. But hats off to this whole National Debt Relief team, yeah, that was surprising," Hamlin said.Hocevar came up just shy of a win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race earlier in the day at Michigan, and as the qualifying session drew to a close, he began to realize how much he truly wanted that pole, which made it all the more crushing when it was snatched from him at the very end of the session."Yeah, I mean, it's a testament to these guys. They do a really good job. They're building really fast race cars. I would have loved to have that there," Hocevar said choking back the emotions. "But yeah, third in the truck race, second in Cup qualifying, so hopefully that's just a trend there. But I would have loved that one."Tyler Reddick, winner of five races already this season and holder of the series point lead, will roll from the starting grid in the third position in Sunday's race, and he'll be joined by Ty Gibbs, the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.Chase Briscoe rounded out the top-five qualifiers.FireKeepers Casino 400 Starting Lineup1. 11-Denny Hamlin2. 77-Carson Hocevar3. 45-Tyler Reddick4. 54-Ty Gibbs5. 19-Chase Briscoe6. 9-Chase Elliott7. 5-Kyle Larson8. 20-Christopher Bell9. 24-William Byron10. 43-Erik Jones11. 7-Daniel Suarez12. 35-Riley Herbst13. 23-Bubba Wallace14. 17-Chris Buescher15. 41-Cole Custer16. 38-Zane Smith17. 42-John Hunter Nemechek18. 22-Joey Logano19. 12-Ryan Blaney20. 71-Michael McDowell21. 3-Austin Dillon22. 4-Noah Gragson23. 47-Ricky Stenhouse Jr.24. 10-Ty Dillon25. 16-AJ Allmendinger26. 6-Brad Keselowski27. 60-Ryan Preece28. 33-Austin Hill29. 48-Alex Bowman30. 97-Shane van Gisbergen31. 2-Austin Cindric32. 1-Ross Chastain33. 51-Cody Ware34. 88-Connor Zilisch35. 34-Todd Gilliland36. 44-JJ Yeley37. 21-Josh BerryAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow