Denny Hamlin uses late-race restart to drive through field, hold off Larson to win SouthPoint 400 for 60th career trip to victory lane

By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)

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Las Vegas-Denny Hamlin has won a lot of races in his career. This includes three Daytona 500s. But the next win he could get would be massive in a few ways. 

To kick off the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs round of 8, the Joe Gibbs driver led 3 times for 9 laps, which included the final three circuits to win the SouthPoint 400 and punch his ticket to the championship race in Phoenix in three weeks. 

After a late-race caution, Hamlin went from 10th to the lead in the final 15 laps to claim the victory. He did this thanks to a four-tire pit stop where he passed drivers on both strategies. He was also extremely aggressive to get the win. 

“Truth, (Crew Chief) Chris (Gayle) did an amazing job on that final stop getting the car just right,” Hamlin said. I just held it down. That’s all I could do, is just go for it. I felt like I had nothing to lose. Just go for it, try to punch a ticket now. Man, this one feels great.” 

With the win, he now ties Kevin Harvick for 10th all-time on NASCAR’s all-time wins list. It was a goal of Hamlin’s before the season. But this will also be his first trip to the championship 4 in the NextGen Car and first since 2021. 

Prior to the race, Hamlin did a whopping seven hours of sim to prepare for this important race. He came in determined to win.  

“I think that just shows the level of dedication he’s got to this, how bad he wants it, right? I snickered at one point, we were talking about the balance of the car, and he was talking about, I just needed a different driver or whatever during the race,” Crew Chief Chris Gayle said of Hamlin’s dedication. “You saw the end of that race, how much he really wanted it. He decided to go it the last 12 laps of that race around the outside of Larson.

I couldn’t be more proud of him and his dedication to it,” Gayle added. “Just believing in himself. I think that’s the first thing. You could see he was pretty emotional in Victory Lane. The one thing I know, he can do it. He’s just got to believe in himself. He’s capable of doing it. I think we’ll take that approach to Phoenix.” 

This is also his 6th win of the season, which gives him the most in the NASCAR Cup Series. The victory also makes him Toyota’s winningest driver, and continues a streak where Toyota has been the only manufacturer to make the championship race in all 11 years of the format. With 6 wins, this is his second-most wins in a season since 2020, when he visited victory lane 8 times. 

Before Hamlin took the lead, there were a pair of late-race cautions that turned the race on its head. The first one came at lap 237 when Ty Dillon was heading to pit road, and second-place running William Byron slammed into him to end both their days. During the pit stops on this yellow, Chase Briscoe and Joey Logano opted for two tires instead of four. It didn’t quite work out for Logano, who finished sixth. 

“We almost pissed everyone off again, Logano explained. “You imagine? Dang it, just close, right? I mean, we put it, put it up there, you get up there, and you hope you get clean air, and then you can maintain.  But really, the 48 kind of had the option to go three-wide down the back stretch.” 

On the restart at lap 246, there was a massive 11-car pile-up, which set up the opportunity for Hamlin to capitalize dominant car of the day was Kyle Larson. He led 4 times for 129 laps in the event. Despite not getting the win, he will need to maintain a +35 point lead over the next two weeks. The laps led included getting over 1,000 laps led for the season.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Obviously, it could completely flip next week. I do feel like our superspeedway stuff has gotten a lot better,” Larson said. “We’ve done really well on them this year. You can never expect a good finish or a finish at all when you go there.

“Yeah, we’ll just try and go and execute like we have been this year at those places,” Larson continued. “Hopefully, we can have another good points day, and maybe Martinsville will be a little bit easier. I know right now it shows plus 35; somebody below the cut line wins. It’s a lot less. Playoff is crazy.” 

Larson was another one of those who took four tires, and it paid off as he went from 4th to 2nd on the final restart.

“I thought I had a big enough gap down the backstretch to go to the top, get momentum. His car, the Toyotas in general, were really, really, really fast on a short run, had a lot of speed,” Larson explained. “He must have nailed the bottom behind me, got inside. It was over from there. Yeah, he did an awesome job. He got up on the wheel there. I felt like I was up on the wheel. He did a really good job. I tried to take his line away in three and four. He got to my outside. Rarely do you see Denny do that. He did a great job. Hats off to them.

Hats off to my team, too. We had an awesome day, as well,” he continued. “I think we were second maybe in the first stage, won the next stage, and second in the race. Good points day obviously. Would have liked the issue with the 10 and the 24 to not happen because we had just kind of taken control of the race there and were going to cruise to victory. That’s racing. It gets crazy. Happy, though, to still get a good finish. It was getting hectic there.” 

The round of 8 after the first race at Vegas looks like this: Hamlin-Win, Larson +35, Christopher +20, Chase Briscoe +15, Byron -15, Elliott -23, Logano -24, and Ryan Blaney, who wrecked out on lap 70 with a flat left front, is -31. 

The round of 8 will continue next Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.