Final Pit Stop Nets Denny Hamlin Lead, Second Consecutive Win

Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

While he was far from the race's dominant driver, Denny Hamlin kept himself near the front all afternoon in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, and when the event was sent into Overtime with a late-race crash involving Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson, Hamlin's No. 11 pit crew knocked off an incredible pit stop, which gave him the race lead.

Following the race, Hamlin said he knew it was going to be a good pit stop when the jack was dropped on the right side of the car, but he still didn't expect to make up enough to gain the lead.

"I needed to stack 10ths [of a second] and 10ths and 10ths on my side of the job. Once I get into the pit stall, they drop the right side. I know I did a good job on my metrics, hopefully I didn’t speed. But then when they dropped the jack on the right, I know right then, Oh, boy, this is going to be a heater," Hamlin said.

Hamlin continued, "At that point you’re, like, you still probably are going to need a little help. Again, the two car length gap that the 12 had on us, I don’t know what that equates to, it’s probably a second of total time. So the pit crew has to make up some. I have to make up some. When you stack all that together, you end up going from third to first."

With the lead in his possession, Hamlin got up on the wheel, got the job done, and held off William Byron, who led a race-high 243 laps, to pick up his second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series win. Hamlin was piloting a throwback paint scheme honoring NASCAR Hall of Famer Carl Edwards' 2006 Office Depot paint scheme.

RACE RESULTS: NASCAR Cup Goodyear 400 at Darlington

The Darlington win is the 56th victory of Hamlin's NASCAR Cup Series career, which breaks a tie with Rusty Wallace, and slots Hamlin into 11th all-time on the NASCAR Cup Series wins list. The win came a week after Hamlin picked up his 55th career win in last weekend's Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

When asked how he feels about his chances at a third-consecutive win next weekend at Bristol, Hamlin said, "I like our outlook to win a lot of races this year."

It was a heartbreaking defeat for Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team as the driver put in a historically dominant performance on Sunday as he led the opening 243 laps of the event before settling for a second-place finish in Overtime.

Byron says when he lost control of the race during a green flag pit sequence near the end of the race spelled the end of his dominant day.

"First off, the team did a great job, great car. We just needed control of the race there under green," Byron said. "We lost that with the sequence where [Tyler Reddick] went really short, and we lost a few spots under the green flag sequence, and that was the difference."

Byron's 243 laps led to start Sunday's Goodyear 400 marked the most consecutive laps led from the green flag of a NASCAR Cup Series event in 25 years. Jeff Burton's 300 laps led in the 2000 event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was the last race where a driver led more laps consecutively from the green flag than Byron did on Sunday.

"I didn't know that exactly, but I was thinking let's just pitch a perfect game here. I felt like we were in a position to have a perfect race, that would have been pretty damn impressive," Byron said. "It sucks, but nobody is at fault. It's just those guys can be aggressive on the other side of us. This is turning into a big strategy place, and we just couldn't keep control."

Even with the disappointing near-miss on what could have been his second win of 2025, Byron took solace in the fact that his car was fast, and at the end of a dominating day, Byron extended his point lead to 49 points over Hamlin after the season's eighth race.

RELATED: NASCAR Cup Series Point Standings After Darlington

Christopher Bell would score a solid third-place finish in the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE, as he crossed the finish line just ahead of 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick, who was scored with a fourth-place result.

Ryan Blaney, who suffered heartache on pit road all race long, had taken the lead of the race away from Reddick with seven laps remaining in regulation, but when the caution came out on Lap 291, Blaney's win rested on a money pit stop. Unfortunately, the No. 12 Team Penske pit crew faltered, and Blaney came out of the pits in fifth.

"If the caution didn't come out I feel like I could have won easily," Blaney said. "We were so much faster on new tires. We did a great strategy call. Those guys short-pitted and they were struggling really bad."

While Blaney would finish with a solid top-five effort, seeing a win slip from his grasp was painful for the driver.

"That stings man, I really wanted to win here. And it wasn't meant to be," Blaney anguished.

Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs, and Kyle Busch rounded out the top-10 finishers in Sunday's Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway.

The ninth-place run marked the first top-10 finish of the season for Gibbs, the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

Brad Keselowski, who has suffered through a rough start to the 2025 season, was hoping to defend his win in last season's Goodyear 400. Early in the event, Keselowski established himself as a solid top-10 competitor. However, a loose wheel on Lap 135 derailed his day.

Keselowski would finish 33rd, two laps off the pace. Keselowski, who has yet to notch a top-10 finish this season, sits 31st in the championship standings after Sunday's race at Darlington.

Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is The Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. The 500-lap race around the 0.533-mile short track is set for Sunday, April 13. That race will be televised on FS1 with coverage set to kick off at 3:00 PM ET.