Denny Hamlin speeds to Bristol Night Race win

Denny Hamlin speeding on pit road seems to be a recurring event. Him winning races is also just as frequent.

Despite being ordered to the rear for a speeding penalty following a lap 70 caution for Austin Cindric getting airbourne after hitting A.J. Allmendinger, Hamlin had plenty of time to make up lost ground. After spending the rest of the first and second stages catching up, he took the lead from his Joe Gibbs Racing team-mate Ty Gibbs on lap 354 and led 142 laps to clinch his third win of the year and third at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“It’s our year. I just feel like we’ve got it all put together. We’ve got the speed every single type of race track. Nothing to stop us at this point,” Hamlin said in his post-race interview before declaring to the jeering fans, “I beat your favourite driver. All of them.”

Fellow JGR driver Christopher Bell dominated the first two stages and led a race-high 187 laps, meaning the trio combined to lead 481 of 500 laps. The team’s fourth driver Martin Truex Jr. struggled mightily and brought out a caution for hitting the wall. Although he finished two laps down, he squeezed into the Round of 12 by just four points thanks to bonuses as the regular season champion; the latter caveat means he is tied for the points lead with William Byron.

Hamlin’s 23XI Racing employee Bubba Wallace claimed the twelfth and final spot in the next round. While Bristol is one of his weaker tracks and he finished a lap down, a third-place Stage #1 finish helped boost him over Ricky Stenhouse Jr. by seven points.

Reigning champion Joey Logano‘s hopes of repeating were dashed by a crash on lap 262 in which Corey LaJoie spun in front of him and also collected Ty Dillon and Justin Haley. Kevin Harvick also received some damage in the incident and placed a disappointing twenty-ninth, meaning his final season ends with a first-round exit. Michael McDowell finished sixth but did not advance to the next round, having been placed in a bad situation after crashing at Darlington.

“It’s a real bummer,” said Logano, whose elimination means the NASCAR Cup Series will still not have a back-to-back champion; the last driver to achieve the feat was Jimmie Johnson during his five consecutive titles from 2006 to 2010. “You get out of the race like that and you’re behind the wall and you’re in denial for a minute. You don’t want to believe that it happened and you want to think that it’s fixable, but the car was tore up too bad.”

The race was marred by concerns of rain, forcing the start to be pushed up an hour only for the first stage to suffer two rain delays.

Race results