Joey Logano once described the 10-week Chase for the Championship as absolute torture, a sentiment **Denny Hamlin** quickly realized was true when his regular-season championship provided almost no protection in his quest for the coveted crown.
Conversely, the 16 stage points he accumulated during the opening portion of the Southern 500 helped cushion the blow of an incident with Michael McDowell, which damaged a right front toe link and a right rear control arm, resulting in an 18th-place result.
He found himself mired in traffic only because of a sluggish pit stop.
Coupled with Christopher Bell’s race win and stage triumph, Hamlin’s lead over his teammate has shrunk to a mere 12 points with nine rounds left. Ryan Blaney trails by 16 points, while Tyler Reddick sits 24 points behind.
The intense battle has officially begun.
“That is precisely why stage points were introduced to the Cup Series years ago,” Hamlin remarked. “The goal was to give a safety net to drivers who encounter trouble late in the race. On evenings like tonight, you really need to pile up those stage points to soften the blow, though this definitely wasn’t the performance we were aiming for.”
So, what exactly went wrong in the encounter with McDowell?
“He was having a hard time on the restart,” Hamlin explained. “It seemed like things got incredibly tight. I entered the corner and slid up, but I didn’t slow down significantly. I did back off a bit, but luck just wasn’t on my side in that moment.”
Because Hamlin was pushed outside the top 15, his pursuers had a prime opportunity to close the distance with strong performances—a chance the top contenders eagerly seized.
**Ty Gibbs** crossed the line in runner-up spot, followed closely by **Tyler Reddick**, **Ryan Blaney**, **Kyle Larson**, and **Chase Briscoe**. Consequently, the entire group remains within a single race’s worth of points behind Hamlin as they prepare for World Wide Technology Raceway.
Safe to say, the title hunt is officially underway.
“I am confident a Toyota driver will claim the championship,” Bell stated following his victory. “I repeated that throughout media day all week. Our roster features four incredible competitors and outstanding operations. This is highly reminiscent of 2019 when every single one of our cars was a threat.
“Every one of us remains in the hunt for the crown. I expect the champion to be one of our four drivers or someone from the 23XI stable. Our current package is exceptional, and our squads are firing on all cylinders. We have to capitalize on this window because momentum shifts—we are leading the pack today, but that won’t last indefinitely.”
This reality made Briscoe’s sixth-place outcome particularly painful after pacesetting for 30 laps, as he was perfectly poised to take advantage of the opportunity but ultimately missed out.
“It’s definitely a case of what might have been,” Briscoe reflected. “We dropped all the way to the very back and managed to climb back to the front within 100 laps, showing we had a strong machine. Things just didn’t fall into place during that final restart. A few drivers opted not to pit, and we went with the inside lane. My instincts suggested the bottom lane would offer more flexibility, but it simply failed to pay off.”The same could be said for Reddick in third.”During the rain delay, we anticipated a sustained green-flag run afterward, but it turned out to be much shorter,” Reddick explained. “We surrendered some track position during that stretch. Fortunately, the crew executed a great adjustment during our final pit visit, enabling us to charge back toward the front. I assumed the race would run clean to the end, but for some reason, that rarely happens here, even when it seems likely. Dropping back at that critical moment hurt, but I’m glad we could fight our way back into contention late—we were just slightly off.”Entering the weekend as the number two seed trailing by 25 points, Ryan Blaney departs in third place, just 16 points back, thanks to a fourth-place effort and 11 stage points.That is a solid outcome.”Deciding to put on fresh tires at the very end was the right move,” Blaney commented. “We had run about four laps on the previous set, and frankly, my restart wasn’t stellar. The car felt incredibly tight, so I figured we should seize the chance to adjust the handling and grab fresh rubber. We managed to slice through traffic and salvage a strong result.””As darkness fell, our balance slipped away from us. The car tightened up, and it took a very long time to restore its responsiveness as the track temperature dropped. Ultimately, though, it was a productive outing with solid stage points and a respectable finish, so we will build on this momentum.”
Varying Fortunes for Hendrick Motorsports
Already starting the postseason on the back foot, combined with a winless campaign so far, William Byron experienced some type of engine issue that relegated him to a 37th-place DNF.
This leaves him sitting 16th in the points, a staggering 116 points behind the leader. Barring a spectacular run where he wins half of the leftover events, his championship aspirations—which were already slim—are likely over.
**Chase Elliott** also seemed positioned for a top-10 result but failed to secure any stage points and dealt with self-inflicted confusion on pit road, misinterpreting crew chief Alan Gustafson’s late-race call for four tires instead of two.
Consequently, he crossed the stripe in 14th place, dropping to 72 points behind the leader.
Meanwhile, teammate Kyle Larson appeared prime to snap his 49-race drought. After pacing the field for a race-best 99 laps, he took over the top spot late in the going by remaining on track with tires that had five laps of wear, staying ahead of Bell and others who opted for four fresh tires.
He was running fourth when the opportunity arose and nearly pulled it off. Larson used aerodynamic blocking to protect his lead as much as possible before finally losing the top spot to Bell with just 12 laps remaining, yet still fought to cross the line in fifth. He now trails Hamlin by only 49 points, having entered the event 60 points behind.
“I anticipated that a larger number of cars would opt to stay out and give me some breathing room,” Larson noted. “Once I noticed those faster cars lined up in row three, I hoped a buffer of an extra row or two would work in my favor. I figured that creating a bottleneck behind me for a few laps would help preserve my tires briefly, even though I knew they’d eventually run me down. I was actually shocked to keep them behind me for that long. It was definitely a gamble, but one worth taking.”
Crew chief Cliff Daniels stood firmly by the decision as well.
“No, I truly believe it provided us with a better shot than if we had chosen to pit,” Daniels stated. “Had we come down pit road, we likely would have been blocked in by John Hunter Nemechek due to our pit stall assignment, which was determined by the Daytona performance metric.
I would love to see us abandon the metric system entirely, as it’s a relic of the COVID-era protocols when teams wanted to avoid weekly randomized lineups in the absence of practice or qualifying sessions. It serves no purpose for us now.
“Allowing the outcome of a superspeedway race to dictate the starting grid and pit selection for a playoff event is highly frustrating. Our sport really needs to move past this practice. I’ll stop ranting about it now. But the reality is we would have been pinned in our stall. We probably would have entered pit road in fourth and exited in sixth.”
Thus, in Daniels’ eyes, the strategy yielded a net benefit.
“Grabbing the lead and putting Kyle on the front row worked out well, and he drove incredibly hard. Historically, that strategy carried a very high success rate, though that was with the previous aerodynamic package that simplified aerodynamic blocking. This current package makes that much harder—and while I’m not lobbying for that style of racing, staying out was still the statistically smarter move.
“Had the skies opened up while we were out front, we would have won. At the very worst, this strategy was equal to or better than what we would have achieved by pitting.”
Strong Showing from Ford
The Team Penske camp—which functions as a four-car alliance including the Wood Brothers—showed top-five caliber speed across the board, maximizing their performances.
Blaney’s fourth-place finish solidified his status as a serious title threat, while Austin Cindric gathered four stage points on his way to a 14th-place result. Though Cindric dropped further back from Hamlin in the standings, his car showed excellent pace.
Meanwhile, three-time series champion Joey Logano battled through what seemed to be a failing engine to secure a ninth-place finish.
“We made massive strides compared to our spring performance here,” Logano noted. “The car’s behavior was much more logical. Unfortunately, we missed out on stage points, which is a critical requirement in the postseason. We didn’t execute on that front.
“We had to overcome several hurdles, including a disconnected spark plug wire, which was a major setback. Aside from that, I think we found some positive adjustments. The crew performed admirably, even if we missed our ultimate target slightly. We took a gamble late in the race. I agreed with Paul’s call to take a chance—we ran ninth before pit stops and ultimately came home ninth. So it was a wash.”
Though excluded from the postseason grid, Josh Berry captured his sixth consecutive top-10 finish for Wood Brothers Racing. This marked the first time a driver in the legendary No. 21 car achieved such a streak since David Pearson did so back in 1976.
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