“Restarts giveth, and restarts taketh away.”
No driver in Sunday’s rain-delayed Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway understood that better than Denny Hamlin.
Over the course of 300 laps, Hamlin went from the pole position to the back of the field, from race favorite to self-inflicted underdog, and then somehow all the way back to Victory Lane. Along the way, he survived 11 cautions, a garage that increasingly resembled a used-car lot full of wrecked Chevrolets, Toyota’s and Fords, and enough exploding brake rotors to make NASCAR’s parts suppliers nervously avoid eye contact.
When it was finally over, Hamlin emerged from a wild three-wide battle with Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe on a restart with four laps remaining to score his third victory of 2026, his first at Nashville, and Toyota’s first Cup Series win at the Tennessee oval.
Bell finished second, Briscoe third, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fourth, and Shane van Gisbergen turned heads with a career-best oval finish of fifth after leading laps earlier in the evening.
“What an unbelievable day,” Hamlin said. “Starting first, going to last, and back to first.”
That wasn’t a figure of speech.
Hamlin’s night began on the pole but lasted exactly one lap before disaster struck. Or more accurately, before NASCAR officials noticed that Hamlin had launched so early on the initial start that he appeared to be operating under a completely different interpretation of time.
The penalty was immediate. A pass-through sent him to the rear of the field and handed the lead to Tyler Reddick.
“I definitely jumped the start, no doubt about that,” Hamlin admitted. “Just didn’t wait quite long enough.”
Meanwhile, Nashville was quietly preparing to become one of the strangest races of the season.
Following a competition caution on Lap 35, van Gisbergen used a two-tire strategy to grab the lead and looked surprisingly comfortable at the front of a field full of oval specialists. The New Zealander held off Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell for more than a dozen laps before Larson finally wrestled the lead away.
Then the brake rotors began exploding.
Connor Zilisch was the first victim on Lap 73 when his right-front rotor failed entering Turn 1. Ross Chastain joined the club before the end of Stage 1. AJ Allmendinger was running third when his rotor detonated and launched his Chevrolet into the wall. By night’s end, Chris Buescher had added his name to the growing membership list.
If the brake rotors weren’t destroying race cars, the drivers were helping.
Brad Keselowski and Austin Cindric saw promising evenings evaporate in a Lap 194 crash. Ten laps later, Buescher got loose and collected Bubba Wallace, triggering a chain reaction that also ended the nights of William Byron and Alex Bowman.
At one point it seemed easier to keep track of who wasn’t involved in an incident.
Through all of it, Hamlin quietly worked his way back toward the front.
As the race entered its final green-flag pit cycle, it became clear that Joe Gibbs Racing had brought a collection of very fast race cars to Nashville. Bell, Briscoe and Hamlin controlled the race while Zane Smith attempted to steal a victory through fuel mileage.
For a while, it looked brilliant.
Then reality arrived wearing the No. 20 Toyota.
Bell blasted past Smith with 12 laps remaining and appeared headed for victory. But Nashville had one more plot twist left in stock.
Buescher’s brake rotor failed with four laps remaining, bringing out the caution and setting up one final restart featuring Bell, Briscoe and Hamlin lined up at the front.
Three teammates. One trophy.
“The 20 and the 19 were battling so hard into the first corner that it let me get to the inside,” Hamlin said. “From there, side-by-side with the 20. He drove in so deep on that last lap into Turn 1, but it allowed me to barely clear off Turn 2.”
The opening corner looked less like teammates racing for a win and more like three bargain hunters fighting over the last television on Black Friday.
When the dust settled, Hamlin emerged with the lead and drove away to victory.
Even then Nashville wasn’t finished.
As Hamlin crossed the finish line, Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick tangled behind him, sending Reddick’s Toyota nose-first into the outside wall in one final act of destruction from a race that seemed determined to leave no sheet metal unbent.
Hamlin, however, escaped with everything that mattered.
A trophy, a guitar, a playoff berth already secure, and perhaps most impressively, a victory after starting the night by breaking one of NASCAR’s most basic rules.
Next weekend the series heads to Michigan International Speedway.
The defending winner there?
Naturally, it’s Denny Hamlin.
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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