Denny Hamlin is through to the Championship 4 of the NASCAR playoffs, and he’s a step away from the final bullet point on his resume.
Hamlin passed Chase Briscoe for the lead late in the South Point 400, then held on to win on Oct. 12 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver is back in the final four for the first time since 2021, with eyes on his first NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Kyle Larson finished second and goes to Talladega next week with a 35-point cushion to the playoff cutline. But as usual, the 2.66-mile gigantic oval will play a major role in the playoffs.
Here are the winners and losers from the NASCAR Las Vegas race:
Denny Hamlin is usually an instigator after wins, usually to the playful disdain of the crowd.
But at Las Vegas, the fans cheered as Hamlin did his burnouts and got out of the car. The tearful veteran thanked the fans and his family after earning his 60th career Cup Series victory to lock into the Championship 4. Hamlin’s dad is also ill.
The driver of the No. 11 Toyota drove from outside the first two rows on the last restart up to second with 10 laps to go, then passed teammate Chase Briscoe with four laps to go for the lead.
Hamlin has done just about all a driver can do in the Cup Series, barring a Brickyard 400 victory and a Cup Series title. He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the top three or four drivers of the playoff era and a co-owner of one of the best teams in the Cup Series. In theory, his resume should be undeniable.
But it’s missing a Cup Series championship. Hamlin will race for a title next month in Phoenix.
With Ryan Blaney’s early-race crash out of the race, Christopher Bell was the one to jump above the cutline with Blaney dropping below on Oct. 12.
Bell managed nine stage points, then maxed out his day with a third-place finish after passing Chase Briscoe in the final laps.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver is third in points, 20 points ahead of the cutline going to Talladega. He’s one fortunate and good race at the pack-racing track away from feeling as good as one can at Martinsville without a victory.
Byron’s Lap 236 crash after not avoiding a pitting Ty Dillon in Turn 4 may have been the most shape-shifting moment in the playoffs so far.
Byron himself was knocked out of race-winning contention and below the playoff cutline after running 2nd at the time of the crash. A sure top-5 finish turned into a 36th-place result, leaving the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet 15 points behind 4th.
But it also allowed for the final pit stop sequence that gave Denny Hamlin the tire advantage to utilize for the win, while erasing Kyle Larson’s 1-second lead at the time of the crash.
And it had a trickle-down impact to Joey Logano and Chase Briscoe too, whose finishes would have likely been worse had the race finished on a long green-flag run.
This is as simple as it gets for Blaney going forward after his Lap 72 cut tire and crash at Las Vegas: He’ll need to have a perfect final two weeks to advance to the Championship 4.
Blaney finished last at Vegas and flipped from above the playoff cutline to open the Round of 8 to 31 points below fourth heading to Talladega.
Blaney is very good at Talladega, but it’s difficult to consider the pack-racing track a reliable option in the playoffs one way or the other.
Vegas was a tough break for the driver I considered the favorite coming into the next-to-last playoff round.
