Denny Hamlin won the Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday by 0.115 seconds, and the two cars he beat to the line were both Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas. Christopher Bell finished second in the No. 20. Chase Briscoe finished third in the No. 19. The three of them ran it out three-wide to the stripe, and all three drive for the same team.
It was the 62nd Cup win of Hamlin's career — and his second in three weeks, after he took the All-Star Race at Dover from the pole. It came from the pole in the No. 11 — a pole he earned without turning a qualifying lap, because rain washed out the session and the field was set on NASCAR's competition-based formula. Hamlin started first, led a race-high 57 laps, and was in front when it counted.
A three-wide team sweep
Joe Gibbs Racing has won races with one car running away from the field. This was the other kind: three of its drivers sorting out the win among themselves at the line, on a track that gave nobody room to relax. Eleven cautions slowed the race for 77 laps, and the lead changed 31 times among 15 drivers. Kyle Larson, who arrived at Nashville on a 37-race winless streak, led the second-most laps of anyone and again left without a trophy.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished fourth in the No. 47. Shane Van Gisbergen came home fifth in the No. 97 after a scoring correction, his best oval finish since joining Cup.
Reddick crashed across the line and still leads
The points leader had the strangest afternoon of anyone in the top five. Tyler Reddick was running inside the top group when he crashed coming to the finish, sliding across the line in sixth. He radioed that he was OK. He also left Nashville exactly where he arrived: in front of everyone.
Reddick holds 657 points, five wins, and a 97-point lead over Hamlin, who moved up to second with the win. Ryan Blaney sits third at 483, Chase Elliott fourth at 460, Ty Gibbs fifth at 449. The cutoff for the 16th and final playoff spot belongs to Austin Cindric at 306. It is the position he held a week earlier, when Daniel Suárez won the Coca-Cola 600, and through 14 races the distance between Reddick and the field is the story the standings keep telling.
What the day cost
The race was hard on equipment. A run of multi-car incidents through the middle stages ended a long list of days early — Chris Buescher, William Byron, Josh Berry, Bubba Wallace, Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski, A.J. Allmendinger, Ross Chastain, and rookie Connor Zilisch all finished in the garage by accident. Ryan Preece went out with a radiator problem.
For Hamlin, none of that mattered. He had the best car, he had the lead, and when his two teammates lined up behind him for the final run, he did not give it back. The next Cup race is at Michigan on June 7.