CONCORD, NC – This was the only career Denny Hamlin had ever dreamed of.
Hamlin finally got the coveted victory of the past 17 years, beating Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch during Sunday night’s overtime at Charlotte Motor Speedway to win the longest Coca-Cola 600 and perhaps the wildest in history.
“It’s so special. This is the last big one that’s not on my resume,” said Hamlin, who has won the Daytona 500 and Southern 500 three times each, the All-Star Race and 48 times in the Cup Series. . “We weren’t doing very well all day, but we put ourselves in the right place at the right time.”
Car owner Joe Gibbs said he knew this was a major victory for Hamlin.
“With Denny running so long and being here and knowing how important this race is here in our backyard, that’s just big business,” Gibbs said.
“It’s so special. This is the last big one that’s not on my resume,” Denny Hamlin said of winning the longest edition of NASCAR’s longest race. Photo of Buda Mendes / Getty Images
NASCAR’s longest and most exhausting race lasted more than five hours and took 619 miles to complete. There were 18 caution flags and 16 pilots did not finish. The race involved a 12-car crash and a crash that caused Chris Buescher’s car to overturn five times before stopping upside down.
Defending champion Kyle Larson struggled with adversity throughout the night, incurring two pitfalls, a fire at his pit stop and the back of his car, and a spin-out. Still, he found a golden opportunity to win when he took the lead with 46 laps to go.
But with two laps to go, Chase Briscoe tried to get past Larson and crashed, taking out the yellow flag as a precaution and sending the race into overtime.
Larson had the inside lane in the restart in overtime, but Austin Dillon got a push from the second row and was soon running at four widths along with Larson, Hamlin and Ross Chastain.
There was an accident that involved several cars with Larson biting Dillon, turning both cars.
“I let go a little bit and tried to get him hooked,” Dillon said. “It didn’t work out at all. I had to do what I had to do to win the race considering where we are in points. We had a chance there to take 600 more.”
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The crash ended Larson’s chance to become the first repeat winner of the event since Jimmie Johnson won three in a row between 2003 and 2005. Larson finished ninth.
He also prepared Hamlin for victory.
In the next restart, Hamlin took the lead and held on to Busch to win. Kevin Harvick finished third, and Briscoe was fourth.
“Given how my day went, I would be happy with a fourth place finish,” Hamlin said.
There was a big crash on lap 192 where Ryan Blaney, who won last weekend’s All-Star race, went down too much on the apron at the bottom of the track and turned around the track again. This started a chain reaction that caught 12 cars, sending some of the best NASCAR stars – Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, William Byron and Chase Elliott among them – behind the wall forever.
Elliott led 93 laps before the crash and appeared to be the car to beat.
“It’s a mess out there,” Byron said. “You can’t drive the car even sideways or you’re shattered. So if someone gets sideways a little bit, we’ll all be destroyed. Either get other people out or turn inland. Just chaos.”
Kurt Busch said: “I think I’ve hit about 15 different things.”
Blaney said the accident occurred when it went down too much.
“Disappointment, I hate it,” Blaney said. “It makes you feel pretty stupid to do this. I hate that he smashed our car and a handful of others … I just didn’t know where he was and I just made a mistake.”
The crashes were not over, as Buescher’s No. 17 Ford overturned five times before landing on its roof after a head-on collision with Daniel Suarez. Buescher had to wait until track officials turned his car around before he could get out of the car.
He said it was more painful than his previous flip in Talladega.
“I thank them for helping me and getting it back, so thank you to everyone who worked hard for not rejecting it,” Buescher said. “It was nice to be able to get out. The blood is running a little in your head. I guess I might have pulled my belts and fell to the ground, but I thought I’d wait for them.”
Elliott won the first stage, while TrackHouse Racing teammates Suarez and Chastain won the second and third stages, respectively.
The race also included Tanner Andrews, a tire changer for Joey Logano’s pit crew, who was cut off his right foot by the Hamlin pole fitter on the pit road.
The NASCAR Cup Series is heading to the St. Louis area. Louis Sunday.