Denny Hamlin’s win of Sunday’s Bluegreen Vacations 500, the penultimate race of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, at ISM Raceway was his sixth of the year and continued Joe Gibbs Racing’s dominance of the season with its 18 wins in 35 races.
JGR’s dominance continues in the lineup of the four-driver championship battle, scheduled for Nov. 17 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, as Hamlin is one of three Gibbs drivers advancing to the final playoff test of the year, joining teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch.
“The caution was the most nervous moment,” Hamlin said. “I was counting down. I have a clock inside the car, and I was looking at the clock and thinking, 20 more minutes of laps, 10 more minutes of laps, five more minutes of laps. I knew it was inevitable. I’ve been through so much at this race track. Obviously, in 2010, and the downfall of our championship run there, to get it all back 10 years later, this is special to me.”
The other title contender at Homestead will be Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick. Hamlin is the only driver among the four who doesn’t already have a Cup Series championship under his belt.
Busch finished second to Hamlin on Sunday to give JGR a one-two finish. All four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers finished in the top-10, with Truex in sixth and Erik Jones, who made the playoffs but was eliminated in an earlier round, in seventh.
Meanwhile, among the four drivers eliminated from championship contention in Sunday’s race was reigning champion Joey Logano. Also eliminated were Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott. Blaney finished third, Larson was fourth, and Logano finished ninth, a lap down. Elliott finished 39th [last], retiring from the race after a flat left-rear tire resulted in hard contact with the wall on lap 166.
“It's just a continuation of our first two weeks [of the playoff round of six], unfortunately,” Elliott said. “I hate it for our NAPA group. We had a decent NAPA Chevy today. It was really tough in traffic to catch guys and, then, pass and whatnot. But I feel like we were in a good position to run solid. I'm not sure why we had a tire go down. I think that's what happened, at least; it seemed like it. It's unfortunate. Like I said, these last three weeks have been pretty rough. So, hopefully, Homestead goes better, and we can get prepared good for next season and get a good notebook for next year."
Hamlin dominated the 312-lap race after taking the lead from Logano on lap 177. By the end of the race his laps-led tally was a race-high 143 laps. Hamlin had a lead of nearly half of a lap on second-place Busch by the time a green-flag cycle of pit stops began just past lap 240. He still had a large lead after the cycle, but that margin was erased by a fifth and final caution when John Hunter Nemechek wrecked with nine laps remaining.
Hamlin took only two tires during the caution and retained his lead. Blaney got out of the pits ahead of Busch by also taking two tires. Busch restarted third on four new tires and quickly took second from Blaney. Despite taking only two, Hamlin was able to hold off his teammate for the three green-flag laps that remained.
“I was nervous,” Hamlin said. I knew the 4 [Harvick] was going to be a big deal. My teammates, the 18 [Busch] was the closest one to us, but we got a really good push from Martin, there, on that final restart. I think he went to go three-wide, and I went to block, and I think he knew I was probably going to wreck if I didn’t win this race. We just did everything we could, did everything right, and unfortunate we had to be put in a crazy situation, there, at the end.”
Busch started on the pole and led the first 69 laps of the race before Brad Keselowski and William Byron stayed out during a lap-67 caution for a Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wreck. After staying out, Keselowski and Byron restarted on the front row, but on new tires, Hamlin took his first lead on lap 73 and won the first 75-lap stage.
Logano dominated the second 75-lap stage and took the stage-two win at lap 150. Hamlin was up front for the restart to begin stage two, but a bad restart shuffled him back to fifth and Logano took the lead. Hamlin quickly got back up to third but had difficulty getting by Elliott for second to challenge Logano up front. Hamlin finally got by Elliott for second on lap 147.
Logano began to struggle after losing the lead to Hamlin, despite previously leading 93 laps. Throughout the first half of the race, all eight playoff drivers were mainstays inside the top-10. After Elliott’s incident, the other seven playoff drivers remained in the top-10. Logano became the exception when he dropped to as low as 12th in the running order around lap 200. He was running 11th when he was lapped by Hamlin on lap 238.
“I don’t know [what happened]. I have no idea,” Logano said. ”It went from a really good car to a car that couldn’t stay on the lead lap with changing tires and a half-pound of air. A lot of things don’t line up there. That doesn’t make any sense. The car shouldn’t do that, but it did, and once we put tires back on it, we got to where we could run competitive at least again, but we were so far back and I was running so hard trying to get back to the 11 [Hamlin] that we ended up using it up again. We just needed a caution at the right time, and we didn’t get it, to try to get back up there. It stinks. We did the first half of the race really well. We had a fast car. We scored a ton of stage points and to the point that we could tie the 18 [Busch], and all I had to do was finish in front of him, which was the goal, and it went bad from there. I don’t get it, but it just wasn’t our year, I guess. I don’t know what to say. You’re up there wishing that somebody gets up there and passes him, but the 18 wasn’t gonna pass him [Hamlin]. He could have but wasn’t going to, obviously, to have all of their cars in, so it is what it is. We’ll move forward.”
Other top-10 finishers included Harvick in fifth, Clint Bowyer in eighth and Brad Keselowski in 10th.
