in the battle for third. Kasey Kahne was the race's defending champion. Practice and qualifying Two practice sessions were held on Saturday, prior to the race. The first session lasted 120 minutes, while the second session was 45 minutes. During the first practice session, Kasey Kahne was quickest, ahead of Kurt Busch and Clint Bowyer in second and third. Jeff Burton was scored fourth quickest, while Denny Hamlin was fifth. In the second and final practice session, Ryan Newman was scored quickest, as Carl Edwards and Juan Pablo Montoya followed in the second and third positions. David Ragan was scored in the fourth position, while Bowyer followed in fifth. During qualifying, forty-seven cars were entered, but only forty-three were able to start because of NASCAR's qualifying procedure. Denny Hamlin clinched his eighth career pole position, with a time of 29.587 seconds. He was joined on the front row by Newman. Kyle Busch qualified third, Edwards took fourth, and Tony Stewart started fifth. The four drivers that failed to qualify for the race were Jason Leffler, Landon Cassill, Scott Riggs, and Todd Bodine. After winning the pole position, Hamlin stated, "I feel like the last 10 races have definitely been up and down for our team," he said. "We were on such a hot streak there. We kind of got spoiled. The regular season was kind of irrelevant at that point because we knew we were going to get in the Chase. We're going to treat these next two weeks as if we're Chase racing. We found ourselves going for wins so much, going all-out for wins, that it probably hurt us in the long run. These next two weeks, we're going back to points racing." Race The race, the twenty-fifth in the season, began at 7:30 pm EDT and was televised live in the United States on ESPN. Before the race, conditions were sunny with a temperature of . Joe Gibbs began the pre-race ceremonies, by giving the invocation. Next, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound performed the national anthem, and Terry Green, Emory Healthcare's 500th heart transplant recipient, gave the command for drivers to start their engines. Denny Hamlin retained his pole position lead into the first corner, followed by Ryan Newman in the second position. Newman was challenging Hamlin, on the first lap. Tony Stewart maintained his starting position of fifth on the grid, as Jimmie Johnson was seventh.