At 45 years old and with a résumé long enough to qualify as a short novel, there aren’t many NASCAR boxes left for Denny Hamlin to check.
On Sunday at Pocono Raceway, he checked another one anyway.
Hamlin hunted down Christopher Bell with four laps remaining, reclaimed the lead and drove away to score his third consecutive NASCAR Cup Series victory, becoming the hottest thing in stock car racing not powered by jet fuel.
And where did he do it?
Pocono.
The same Tricky Triangle where Hamlin announced himself to the NASCAR world with his first Cup win back in 2006.
Twenty years later, apparently nobody told him he was supposed to slow down.
The victory was Hamlin’s eighth at the 2.5-mile Pennsylvania track.
For once, Hamlin actually got to enjoy the view from the pole position at the start. That lasted approximately one lap.
Kyle Larson, starting second, wasted no time grabbing the lead before the field even settled in. Hamlin, though, never disappeared. He stalked Larson early and pounced on Lap 25 when traffic slowed the No. 5 Chevrolet.
From there Hamlin looked untouchable, cruising to his fifth stage victory of the season by 2.5 seconds.
Then strategy happened.
Six drivers stopped before the end of Stage 1 and stayed out, putting John Hunter Nemechek and Tyler Reddick at the front to begin Stage 2 while Hamlin restarted fifth.
Reddick eventually worked past Nemechek, but before the race could settle down again, Zane Smith got loose under Hamlin exiting Turn 1 and found the inside wall. No collateral damage, but Smith’s day ended there.
The caution parade wasn’t done.
On Lap 48, Austin Hill attempted one of those moves that looks brilliant in your imagination and catastrophic everywhere else, making it three-wide entering Turn 3 with Shane van Gisbergen and Josh Berry.
Predictably, physics intervened.
Hill squeezed SVG into Berry, Berry pounded the outside wall and the resulting accordion effect collected Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Bubba Wallace, Connor Zilisch, Noah Gragson and Christopher Bell, who was already competing with a broken wrist suffered at Michigan.
Everyone limped away except Keselowski and Gragson, whose afternoons ended early.
When racing resumed, a group of fuel gamblers led by Nemechek and Chase Briscoe stayed out and inherited track position. Hamlin restarted 13th.
Which turned out not to matter.
Methodically, quietly, almost annoyingly efficiently, Hamlin sliced through the field. By Lap 59 he was back inside the top 10. By the time green-flag pit stops cycled through, he was right back where he always seems to end up these days: near the front.
Stage 2 belonged to Todd Gilliland, who stretched fuel and captured the first stage win of his Cup career.
But nobody watching seriously thought Hamlin had gone away.
The final stage started with strategy again shuffling the order before Nemechek retook command and Hamlin moved back into striking distance. A brake rotor explosion on Casey Mears’ car triggered the fifth caution of the day and reset everything.
With 50 laps remaining, Hamlin was back in front.
By Lap 116, the race looked over.
Christopher Bell had other ideas.
Bell’s team rolled the dice on fuel strategy after stopping with 51 laps to go and then staying out, hoping for either a miracle or enough fuel economy to survive. It was the same playbook Chase Briscoe used to win here a year ago.
Problem was, Bell tried to stretch it ten laps farther.
At one point Bell led Hamlin by more than 11 seconds while driving like there was an egg under the throttle pedal.
Hamlin didn’t panic.
He simply started taking giant bites out of the gap.
Seven laps to go: 2.6 seconds.
Bell’s crew knew what was coming.
Crew chief Adam Stevens radioed: “We’ll probably slide in P4 if we did enough saving.”
Spotter Tab Boyd made the mission clear: just make it to the finish.
Spoiler alert: they did not.
Hamlin drove past Bell with four laps remaining and disappeared.
Coming to the white flag, Bell’s Toyota stumbled and finally surrendered, forcing him to pit.
Hamlin crossed the line 1.6 seconds ahead of Tyler Reddick.
William Byron came home third and looked more encouraged than disappointed.
“I think this is probably the first time in four months that I’ve been able to drive the car this way, just be able to make moves and have the balance stay with me,” Byron said. “Just appreciate everyone on this No. 24 Raptor Chevy team and back at Hendrick Motorsports for working really hard, trusting in our tools and the things we can use to prepare.
“I felt confident throughout the weekend, and I just felt like from Lap One on-track, I could push pretty hard. The strategy makes it tough where you have to restart towards the back, but I felt like with our Raptor Chevy, we could manipulate and work through traffic, so that was awesome.”
John Hunter Nemechek finished fourth after leading a race-high 42 laps, while Larson completed the top five.
Erik Jones, Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, Ty Gibbs and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top 10.
Afterward, Hamlin sounded less like a driver enjoying a hot streak and more like somebody who expects this to continue.
“No doubt. First win here, so special here,” Hamlin said. “Pocono has mastered the fan experience from the crowd in the stands to the infield here.
“I have to say, awesome for the King’s Hawaiian car, finally the King’s Hawaiian curse is over. They thought my head was getting a little big, so they made me wear this suit this week to put me back to where I need to be.
“Just so happy for this whole Joe Gibbs Racing team. The pit crew is flawless right now. We got it all going.”
Asked if the Pocono crowd is finally warming up to him after years of hearing boos, Hamlin paused.
“I mean, thank you. That really means a lot, seriously. Thank you so much for that. It’s like a second home for me.”
Then came the question that probably matters most.
Is this the most confident he’s ever been in 21 years in Cup?
Hamlin didn’t hesitate.
“I would certainly say it’s the best we’ve been. We come to the racetrack every week knowing we got a great shot to win. The team’s doing an amazing job giving me exactly what I need in the car every single week. That’s why we’re winning.”
Next stop: NASCAR’s highly anticipated trip to Naval Base Coronado in San Diego for a 75-lap street race.
And if Hamlin keeps driving like this, the field might want to start looking for a different script.
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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