Denny Hamlin’s Darlington sweep ruined by loose wheel, Kyle Larson capitalises

On Saturday, Denny Hamlin was in Victory Lane at Darlington Raceway while Kyle Larson finished last after struggling with engine problems. On Sunday, Hamlin was dominating before a pit road error dropped him out of contention while Larson delivered the 500th win for Hendrick Motorsports’ engine department.

Hamlin won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday in an overtime scramble despite the event being mostly led by his Joe Gibbs Racing team-mate John Hunter Nemechek. The restart was set up by Parker Kligerman getting spun by Sam Mayer in the closing moments, and Hamlin held off Austin Hill and Nemechek for his sixth Xfinity win at Darlington.

He sought to continue his momentum in the Cup Series the next day, and things shaped up in such a manner as he led 177 laps and won the first two stages. However, his day unravelled during green-flag pit stops on lap 270 when his team realised the left-rear tyre had not been fully tightened on his car, forcing him to return to pit road. Hamlin was unable to recover and was eventually caught in a lap 332 wreck with team-mate Christopher Bell and fellow playoff contender Michael McDowell, finishing twenty-fifth.

“It looked like the left rear was still tightening as we were gone,” Hamlin explained. “It’s close enough to where it didn’t matter. What I felt, I was in a crash. I had to bring it in and just turned the day upside down. I didn’t think the damage was that bad, but the car drove significantly worse after that incident. Once you damage the splitter on these cars, they’re no good.”

With Hamlin out of the picture, Larson seized the opportunity to rebound from his Saturday troubles. He spent the final fifty-five laps facing pressure from Tyler Reddick, which was exacerbated by Larson’s driving style that preferred riding along the wall. This approach caused him to lose some time upon scraping the wall, but lapped traffic helped keep Reddick at bay.

The win is his first in the Cup Series at Darlington, a rather surprising feat as he had typically run up front only to fall short in the end. Larson had led a combined 715 laps but finished second in three consecutive Darlington races between 2019 and 2021.

“It feels really good, honestly, just to get a win and finally win at this track,” Larson commented. “We’ve led lots of laps here, so to lead lots of laps here, you have to be good at a number of different races through the different years. This is just a track that I really enjoy, suits my style, and just haven’t won yet here. It was good to do it today.

“I knew we were going to have a good car. We just didn’t qualify as good as we had hoped. Drove through the field way better than I thought that I would, and today did a really good job on the pit sequences to cycle us in front of people, and from then on you try and manage a race. Denny was really good, too. He was going to be hard to beat without his mishap, but once whatever happened to them happened, it kind of opened the door for a few more guys to possibly win, and we kept ourselves in the game enough to get it done. I got in the wall at some point in the third stage and then kind of had to nurse it to the next pit stop and then things just worked out. The team executed when we needed to.”

With the win, Larson qualifies for the Round of 12. While the Xfinity race was not a playoff event like the Cup event that opened the postseason, it also provided another layer to the playoff picture as Sheldon Creed clinched his berth.

Cup race results

Xfinity race results