INDIANAPOLIS — Denny Hamlin figures this weekend is when NASCAR’s real championship contenders begin to separate themselves from the pack. He thinks he’s part of that group – and he’s off to a pretty good start.

Hamlin won pole position for the Brickyard 400 on Saturday, turning a lap of 182.763 mph in qualifying. And with a good run in the race Sunday, Hamlin figures he can rev up his push for a title.

“This is the turning point of the season,” Hamlin said. “We feel like from Indy to Richmond is when you’re going to start to see who’s going to fight for a championship. Everyone has got their Chase cars prepared, bringing them to the racetrack, starting to tune on them, and that’s when you want to start running good.”

It’s the 11th pole of Hamlin’s career and his second this season.

Hamlin’s best finish in six career Brickyard starts is third in 2008. Coming into this weekend, he had never started higher than 10th at the historic 2.5-mile oval.

“I feel like when we come here, we can win every single time,” Hamlin said. “You ask me that about a couple other tracks, I would say no.”

Carl Edwards qualified second in his first race weekend with new crew chief Chad Norris, followed by Joey Logano, Aric Almirola and Greg Biffle.

It was something of a fresh start for Edwards, who lost the championship to Tony Stewart on a tiebreaker last season but is a disappointing 11th in the standings. Roush Fenway Racing replaced Bob Osborne as the crew chief for Edwards’ car last week, citing an undisclosed health issue that Osborne is dealing with.

Edwards praised his crew for staying focused during the change.

“All the guys got together and worked toward this common cause,” Edwards said. “Monday at noon we knew what our plan was this weekend as far as who was going to be working where. Everyone has worked really hard for the last 12 days or however long that is to make this happen. It is just one lap. Anything can happen. But this is the first step toward our comeback to make the Chase and I think everyone did a good job.”

FORMULA ONE: Lewis Hamilton of McLaren secured pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix at Budapest, ahead of Romain Grosjean of Lotus and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.

Hamilton set a pace of 1 minute, 20.953 seconds in the qualifying session, .413 seconds better than Grosjean.

BEECH RIDGE: Austin Theriault of Fort Kent earned his first American Canadian Tour win in a rain-shortened race.

Theriault battled with Jeff Taylor of Farmington for most of the race and came away ahead just before the fourth and final caution flew on Lap 112 because of rain.

Dave Farrington Jr. of Jay finished third, followed by Glen Luce of Turner and eight-time ACT champion Brian Hoar of Williston, Vt.