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.
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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
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.
