Denny Hamlin came into Bristol under immense pressure, trailing the cutoff by six points after an underwhelming 23rd place finish at Watkins Glen. But, as is his style, he brought all the quiet confidence you’d expect from a guy who had won the last two races at Thunder Valley.
And in the end, he delivered without any sort of cocky fanfare or bravado. He simply avoided trouble, on the track and on pit road. No, he didn’t win, that honor belonged to Kyle Larson who staged an epic domination. Instead, Hamlin finished a quiet fourth grabbing Stage points along the way and leaving 10th in points and seeded sixth in the Round of 12.
“My aspirations were to win it – but it looked like the 5 (Kyle Larson) there was better than all of us,” Hamlin said. “Solid car. I thought we were really good towards the middle of the stages, and then at the end, got too loose and couldn’t hang onto what we had. Overall, top-five day, good stage points – kind of in the mix, just not really as good as we’ve been here the last few times, but overall I want to thank this whole FedEx Toyota team for giving me something I can move on with.”
Chase Briscoe has had confidence since his win at Darlington. That confidence carried over to Watkins Glen where he became the highest finishing Playoff driver in the field. It’s the type of confidence he hopes will carry his lame duck Stewart-Haas Racing team all the way to the Final Four.
Unlike Hamlin, Briscoe had a night full of drama. Broken rear-view camera? Check. Smoke-filled cockpit? Check. Pit stop disaster? Check. Yet Briscoe clawed back from 17th after a botched pit stop to finish eighth, proving once again that he thrives under pressure. “Honestly, it wasn’t really stressful,” Briscoe said with a grin. His newfound confidence, sparked by his Darlington win, is carrying him and his lame-duck Stewart-Haas Racing team far further than anyone expected. He might be seeded in the final spot, but if anyone can make a run for the Final Four, it’s this guy.
Ty Gibbs came into Bristol 6 points above the cutline but found himself battling a familiar enemy—himself. A speeding penalty sent him tumbling back in the field, leaving him to chase the playoff cutoff with the kind of desperation that leads to errors. Even Daniel Suarez, who spent most of the race laps down, became Gibbs’ worst nightmare. “I felt bad for the 54,” Suarez admitted, after spending laps blocking Gibbs. “But I had to play games to affect him.”
Kyle Larson makes Bristol his playground as Playoff hopes collapse for Gibbs and Truex
Gibbs would only manage 15th place, and is out of the Playoffs for this year.
“The speeding penalty is on me,” Gibbs lamented. “Just we run under the lights so close, and I just got a little bit too much, I guess. My fault. Unfortunate.“
Perhaps no one was more disappointed than Martin Truex Jr. The retiring driver seemed to have a legitimate chance to win, or at least finish well enough to move to the next round. He finished fourth in Stage 1 and second in Stage 2. But a speeding penalty late in the going doomed his chances. His Toyota seemed anchored deep in the field and never made it higher than 24th.
“Just really sad for my guys,” Truex said. “They work so hard. We had a really strong car tonight, and we got a lot of stage points. We did what we needed there. Just hate I screwed it up. I wish we could have at least seen if we could have done it. It would have been fun to have a fighting chance. From here we’ll just go on and try to race hard and get back to Victory Lane before it’s all said and done.”
Truex will now leave his fulltime role at the end of the season without the mic drop moment of one more NASCAR Cup championship.
“You never like to let anybody down, no matter what the situation,” he said. “I hate that I did that tonight.”
Bristol wasn’t just another short track slugfest—it was a brutal reminder of the razor-thin margins that define the NASCAR Playoffs. Hamlin’s quiet efficiency, Briscoe’s resilience, and Truex’s heartbreak all highlight the unpredictable nature of the sport. As the Round of 12 gets underway the field tightens, and for those who survived the chaos, the real battle is just beginning.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" 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, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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