It was here just a few months ago that an emotional Denny Hamlin shed his villain status, climbing from his car at the start-finish line at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to a chorus of cheers from the crowd. Something rare for a driver everyone seemed to want to hate.
That day he fought back tears as he dedicated the win to his father, whose health was failing.
It would be the last time he would score a victory while his father was still alive. Dennis Hamlin, who sacrificed everything so his son could chase speed for a living, was killed in a house fire over the winter. Sunday the son returned to that same start-finish line to celebrate another win.
On Sunday, the James Dennis Hamlin came back to the very same stretch of asphalt.
And it was just as emotional as it was last October. Yes, he would ultimately stand on the frontstretch with his children and his mother beside him. But first he had to endure the sort of day that would make lesser drivers quietly contemplate a career in real estate.
It wasn’t an easy day for Hamlin. Sure, he led the most laps, 134, but was forced to come from 31st after a speeding penalty on lap 84 sent him to the back of the field. By lap 119 though Hamlin was nearing the top 10, and at the end of Stage 2, he was in third.
For much of the day it looked like it was shaping up as contest between Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports. JGR driver Christopher Bell started from pole and won the first stage. But then it was the Hendrick duo of William Byron and Kyle Larson taking over with Byron winning the second stage. Larson, meanwhile, would lead the second most laps on the day, 62.
The final segment began with Byron trying to assert control. Instead, the Joe Gibbs Racing duo of Hamlin and Bell surged forward, swallowing Larson whole. On Lap 185, Hamlin completed the rally, taking the lead from Byron and reminding everyone that villains — especially aging ones — rarely follow the script.
The race’s only on-track caution came on Lap 211 when rookie Connor Zilisch misjudged traffic heading to pit road and spun solo along the frontstretch. It wiped out the need for green-flag stops and set up a straight fight to the finish.
The restart came with 50 laps to go. Hamlin in control.
Behind him, Chase Elliott began a slow, methodical hunt. With 30 laps remaining, the Hendrick driver had moved into second and was trimming what had been nearly a two-second deficit. Hamlin’s long-run speed — questionable all afternoon — began to fade again. Lapped traffic complicated matters. The gap shrank. The tension rose.
For a moment, it felt inevitable.
Then Hamlin found clean air.
With 10 laps to go, Elliott’s charge stalled just enough. Hamlin steadied the wheel, dug into whatever emotional reserves he had left, and held on. The margin at the line was just .502 of a second.
“Makes me look good when I can drive cars like this.,” Hamlin said. “I got to thank the whole team. They’re the ones that made all this happen.”
Elliott finished second, Byron third, Bell fourth and Gibbs an impressive fifth after his own penalty.
“Yeah, man,” Elliott said. “As bummed as I am to come up that close to a win, I have to kind of bring myself back to a reality check, how much better we ran today than we’ve been running.”
Chris Buescher was a quiet sixth, Larson seventh, and Briscoe completed his comeback to eighth. Bubba Wallace and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10.
For Hamlin, the victory was his 61st in the NASCAR Cup Series — enough to move him into sole possession of 10th on the all-time wins list, breaking a tie with Kevin Harvick.
“I feel very fortunate to be on the list,” Hamlin said in a rare for him show of humility. “Those guys were far more talented than I have ever thought about being. I just work really hard. I still to this day work really hard at my craft to try to continue to get better.”
But statistics felt secondary on this night.
Standing again on that same start-finish line, surrounded by family, Hamlin looked upward and offered the kind of reflection that doesn’t come from media training or sponsor obligations. A reflection that comes just weeks after he said he wasn’t sure he would ever get behind the wheel of a race car again.
“I mean, I knew it took a few weeks to feel like driving,” he said. “Over the last couple weeks, I definitely regained my love of it, got refocused. These are great opportunities for us.”
“This is a family sport,” he added. “My family sacrificed so much to help me get here… I know Dad’s still there saying, ‘That’s my boy.’ …Hell of a day.”
Next Sunday the series heads to Darlington.
The defending winner there? James Dennis Hamlin.
And the cheers will no doubt be just as loud.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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