Denny Hamlin is still on baby watch, but he had one more workday to take care of Sunday.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver made his way past William Byron with four laps to go and had enough gas to hang on and win the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich.
Racing a snappy purple No. 11 Toyota, Hamlin passed Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet with four circuits left on the two-mile track, and Byron ran out of gas coming to the white flag. The Hendrick Motorsports driver landed in 28th place.
In delivering Toyota its second straight MIS win, Hamlin beat Ford’s Chris Buescher by 1.09 seconds for his third Cup Series win this season and third at the Michigan track. His last victory there came in June 2011.
“I wanted to get the lead, (Byron) was doing a great job defending,” Hamlin said before taunting the crowd’s mixture of cheers and boos. “Daddy, I’m sorry, but I beat your favorite driver, folks.”
When asked who that driver was, Hamlin, who led just five laps, said, “All of them.”
Hamlin and fiancee Jordan Fish are expecting their third child. Hamlin said he was prepared to leave the race if she went into labor during the first 50 laps.
Hamlin won for the 57th time in his 701st career race, becoming just the 10th driver to win after making 700 starts.
“We’ve been so fast the entire year but haven’t been finishing for one reason or another,” said Hamlin, 44. “It feels good to come here to Michigan, where we’ve been so close over the years, and get a victory … Such a gratifying day to restart 11th, 12th, something like that, and then drive to the front.”
Ty Gibbs and Bubba Wallace were third and fourth, respectively. Gibbs is Hamlin’s JGR teammate and Wallace drives for 23XI Racing, which Hamlin co-owns. Kyle Larson finished fifth.
Byron grabbed the lead away from polesitter Chase Briscoe on Lap 12 of Stage 1, but Buescher passed Byron on Lap 36 of the 45-lap segment and earned his first stage win of 2025.
Byron finished second while Hamlin, Briscoe and Josh Berry completed the top five in the incident-free stage.
The first caution for cause waved on Lap 60 when Noah Gragson and John Hunter Nemechek, running just inside the top 20, spun on the backstretch to bunch up the field again, but seven laps later a hard wreck occurred in Turn 2.
Riding in the bottom lane, last week’s winner Ryan Blaney tapped Cole Custer’s No. 41, triggering a mess that ended up with Alex Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet crashing violently nose-first into the wall and Briscoe spinning after being clipped by Custer’s Ford. That prompted a red-flag condition for cleanup.
“Yeah, that hurt a lot,” Bowman said. “It was probably top of the board on hits I’ve taken, and, unfortunately, I’ve taken a lot of hits.”
As Stage 2 neared its end, Blaney slapped the wall on his own in the No. 12 Ford and spun down the speedway, an unfortunate fifth caution for Christopher Bell, who pitted shortly before Blaney’s mishap.
The closing laps of the stage featured a spirited battle between Byron, Tyler Reddick, Austin Cindric and Carson Hocevar. Byron made the winning pass on the final lap for the stage win while Cindric was able to hold off Michigan native Hocevar for second.
Hocevar took the point on Lap 152, but the Spire Motorsports driver suffered a flat left rear tire with 19 circuits left, turning over the lead to Byron. Hocevar finished 29th.
–Field Level Media
