After his first winless season in his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career, Denny Hamlin made sure he won early in 2019, winning the season-opening Daytona 500 on Sunday. The latest victory was Hamlin's second Daytona 500 win, as he also won NASCAR's biggest race in 2016. In victory lane, Hamlin remembered J.D. Gibbs, son of team owner Joe Gibbs and a founder of Joe Gibbs Racing, who passed away last month at the age of 49.
“The whole [Gibbs] family – they did so much for me over the course of my career. This one is for J.D.,” Hamlin said. “We are desperately going to miss him the rest of our lies. His legacy still lives on through Joe Gibbs Racing and proud to do this for them.”
Joe Gibbs Racing honored Gibbs during the race. On lap 11, the four JGR teams held up banners honoring Gibbs on pit road. At the end of the race, the organization swept the top-three. Following Hamlin were teammates Kyle Busch and Erik Jones in second and third.
Hamlin and Busch led 30 and 37 laps, respectively, in the race that was scheduled for 200 laps but was extended to 207 by a 12th caution that came out on lap 198. Hamlin and Busch took the top-two spots in the running order with about 30 laps to go, and each of the teammates led laps over the course of the remainder of the race. They continued to maintain their positions through three restarts inside the final 10 laps, including two that followed red-flag stoppages because of multi-car crashes.
Sunday's race was attrition filled, with six of the 12 cautions coming in the final 30 laps of the scheduled distance. The biggest crash of the race on lap 190 involved approximately half of the 40 cars that started the race, including Matt DiBenedetto, who had led a race-high 49 laps to that point, and William Byron, who started on the pole and led 44 laps. Byron's damage from that crash was slight, but he was also collected in the final crash of the race on lap 198 that sent the race into overtime, extending the distance from 200 to 207 laps.
“I am not really sure what happened,” Menard said. I hooked the 95 [DiBenedetto]. I was trying to get to his outside, and he was kind of in the middle, and he went to the outside and was going back and forth. The 12 [Ryan Blaney] had a big run, so I jumped up in front of him and hooked the 95. I am not sure what really happened, there. I will take the blame for that one, I guess. We had really fast Fords. I sped on pit road and got us behind. We had to play catch-up. We had a shot there at the end, though.”
Busch and Ryan Blaney were winners in each of the 60-lap stages that made up the first 120 laps of the race.
Busch took the lead that led to his stage win on lap 35. Hamlin ran second to Busch for most of the remaining laps in the opening stage, but he got out of line on the final lap of the stage, and as a result, drifted back to sixth.
Blaney was one of four drivers who stayed out during a caution for a wreck involving Casey Mears and Parker Kligerman with 14 laps remaining in the second stage. Drivers who pitted under yellow took new tires, and with those new tires were able to move toward the front, passing the other three drivers who stayed out. Blaney, though, was able to hold off Byron on the final lap to end the stage up front.
Three other drivers, including Blaney’s Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski, also stayed out after pitting under green before the caution. But drivers who pitted and got new tires during the caution were able to take advantage of those tires to get back to the front, passing all, except Logano.
Joey Logano and Michael McDowell rounded out the top-five of the finishing order. Finishing sixth through 10th were Ty Dillon, Kyle Larson, Ryan Preece, Johnson and Ross Chastain.
