Denny Hamlin took the lead with three laps remaining to win a fuel-mileage battle at Michigan International Speedway.
On Lap 197 of 200, Hamlin moved into first past William Byron, who had to pit after his No. 24 Chevrolet ran out of fuel two laps later.
“Obviously, (Byron) was doing a great job of defending,” Hamlin told Prime pit reporter Kim Coon while addressing the fronstretch grandstands at the 2-mile oval. “But Daddy, I’m sorry, but I beat your favorite driver, folks. All of them.”
Hamlin’s fiancee, Jordan Fish, is expecting the couple’s third child (a boy) this week, which comes on the heels of his 23XI Racing team losing a motion in its lawsuit with NASCAR.
Chris Buescher finished second, followed by Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson.
Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, Kyle Busch, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10.
Byron finished 28th despite leading four times for a race-high 98 laps.
“It was just trying to manage both: Try to keep the lead and save fuel down the straights and on exits,” Byron told Coon. “That one you can’t do a lot about. It sucks. It really stings, but we had a really good car. I thought we executed well on the last stop. We just burned more (fuel) and not able to do much about that. It is what it is.”
Hamlin earned his third victory of the season and the 57th of his career. For his third victory in Brooklyn, Michigan, and first there since 2011, Hamlin had to slice through a lot of traffic after restarting 11th with 47 laps remaining. The race stayed green the rest of the way.
“It’s fantastic,” said Hamlin, who became Joe Gibbs Racing’s all-time Cup winner Sunday (breaking a tie with former teammate Kyle Busch). "(Crew chief) Chris Gayle, this whole team has just done a great job. We’ve been so fast throughout the entire year, just haven’t finished it for one reason or another. Feels good to come here at Michigan where we’ve been so close over the years. This is such a gratifying day to restart 11th or something like that and drive through the field. I knew I was going to have to go 100 percent to get around everybody. Just worked them one by one.”
For the third consecutive race, Carson Hocevar had a good chance to break through for his first Cup Series victory, but the Spire Motorsports driver suffered a flat left-rear tire while leaving with 19 laps remaining. The Portage, Michigan, native was forced to pit under green and fell a lap down in 30th after leading 22 laps.
Hocevar tied a career-best finish at Nashville Superspeedway last week and was in contention for the Coca-Cola 600 before an engine failure in his No. 77 Chevrolet.
The race was stopped ror more than 11 minutes by a red flag for cleanup of a five-car crash in Turn 2 on Lap 67. Alex Bowman took the worst of it, getting turned into a head-on collision with the outside wall by contact from Cole Custer (who had been hit by Austin Cindric).
Bowman walked away from his mangled No. 48 Chevrolet, but his freefall in the points standings continued with his seventh finish of 27th or worse in the past nine races.
“That hurt a lot,” Bowman told Coon. “That was probably top of the board on hits I’ve taken, and unfortunately I’ve had a lot of hits. So I hate that for the 48 team. Couldn’t really do anything except think about ‘Oh (expletive) this is about to hurt really bad.’
“Hate that for our team. It’s been a rough two months. I mean, honesty, we were pretty decent (in practice), I was pretty optimistic to start today. We got super loose and just had a long pit stop trying to make an adjustment to make it better. And never really got a chance to race again after that. I’m confident that my guys would have gotten the car better, and we could have gotten back up through there, but unfortunately, when you get in the back like that, (expletive) gets pretty crazy, and stuff like that happens.”
Stage 1 winner: Buescher
Stage 2 winner: Byron
Next up: Sunday, June 15, 3 p.m. ET at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course in Mexico City on Prime.
