Denny Hamlin Delivers Second Career NASCAR All-Star Race Win

All weekend long, Denny Hamlin was the class of the NASCAR All-Star Race field at Dover Motor Speedway.

The driver of the No. 11 Progressive Toyota took the pole position in Saturday’s qualifying session, earned the pole for the 200-lap final segment through his performance in the opening two segments of Sunday’s race, and when the chips were on the table, Hamlin cashed out a $1 million victory.

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“It makes it a lot easier when you got a car this fast honestly,” Hamlin said following the race.

While Hamlin led a final segment-high 103 laps, the driver’s Kryptonite all afternoon was his initial speed on restarts. On the final restart of the race with 52 laps to go, Hamlin again struggled to fire off, which allowed Chase Briscoe to scoot by for the race lead.

Briscoe, who had a car that was strong on the short run all race long, was able to fend off Hamlin’s challenge for the lead for 22 laps. However, Hamlin’s long-run pace, and race craft were simply too much to overcome.

With 30 laps to go, Hamlin made a race-winning pass on Briscoe, and as Briscoe attempted to perform a crossover move to retake the lead, Hamlin defended it flawlessly. Hamlin wouldn’t look back as he led the final 30 laps without issue, and he cruised to his second career All-Star Race win over Briscoe by a margin of 0.887 seconds.

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While the final segment of the race resembled a traditional NASCAR Cup Series event at Dover Motor Speedway, the opening two segments of the event were ultra-chaotic, and many questioned the use of the format as numerous drivers who were locked into the final segment were swept up in big crashes, putting their All-Star Race status in jeopardy.

Hamlin actually had a glowing review of the format, as he liked that it forced him to battle back at points of the event.

“I mean, I liked it,” Hamlin said of the format. “It challenged us to have to go through traffic. Otherwise, I mean, you could go out there, and you could lead a bunch of laps. I definitely like the invert. Obviously, it caused some chaos there, took out some good cars. Overall, this is a typical All-Star Race when that stuff happens.”

Briscoe was proud of the effort from his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team, after they had to fight back to get their car ready after sustaining damage in practice.

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“Yeah, it was obviously a really fast car. I’m just proud of our group. I knocked the wall down in practice. We basically rebuilt the whole car. So for them to be able to get the car back to where it’s competitive, it says a lot about the guys,” Briscoe said.

The driver explained he wasn’t sure how the race was going to go when he woke up on Sunday morning, as he had been dealing with a stomach ailment in addition to the repairs made to his car.

“It was a hard-fought day. I’ve been having the stomach bug bad the last two, three days. Didn’t know how today was truthfully going to go,” Briscoe said. “I had the shot at the end for a million bucks. Can’t ask for anything more.”

Erik Jones, who advanced to the All-Star field from the opening two segments, came home with a third-place finish, which allowed Toyota Racing to secure a clean sweep of the top-three positions.

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Austin Dillon finished fourth, while Connor Zilisch was fifth.

Opening Segment Features Two Big Crashes

Prior to the relatively clean final segment, the NASCAR All-Star Race featured a very rough opening 150 laps. The first 75-lap segment featured two separate crashes, which swept up a total of 20 cars. And the final 11-car melee of the segment led to Chase Elliott missing out on the final segment of the All-Star Race.

Due to the crashes in segment 1, other fan favorites such as Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson, were forced to compete in cars that had been hampered by massive damage.

The chaos began on Lap 2, when Ryan Preece attempted to make a lane change near the back of the field. Preece would make contact with a car behind him, and would go hard into the outside wall. As Preece’s car erupted into flames, Larson, Blaney, Elliott and others piled into the crash.