Denny Hamlin held off Tyler Reddick by 1.678 seconds at Pocono Raceway on Sunday to win his third straight NASCAR Cup Series race. The third win in a row did what the first two had started: it turned a runaway points race into a contest.
Hamlin, in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, won the Great American Getaway 400 from the pole. It was his record eighth Cup win at Pocono and the 64th of his career, a number that moves him past the late Kyle Busch into sole possession of ninth on the sport's all-time wins list. The eighth Pocono win also gave Joe Gibbs Racing a share of the most Cup victories all-time at the track. At 45, it was the first three-race winning streak of his 21 full-time seasons: Nashville, then Michigan, now Pocono.
The math is what changes the season. Reddick, in the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota, has led the Cup standings since the spring, by as much as 100 points. He finished second on Sunday and still watched his lead shrink to 19, the smallest gap at the top all year, with 10 races left before the 16-driver Chase field is set. Reddick has won five times in 2026. The problem is the driver directly behind him just won three in a row.
"If the 11 wasn't the winner, you could consider this a good day," Reddick said. He rallied from fifth in the closing laps but never got close enough to challenge for the win.
Worth noting: Hamlin co-owns 23XI Racing, with Michael Jordan. He is, in other words, chasing his own driver.
Hamlin is the first driver since Darrell Waltrip in 1981 to win three races in a row from the pole, a run of execution that has defined his summer. He waved off the milestone. "I don't think it's going to be something that's going to go on the résumé," Hamlin said. "It's going to be something that I certainly remember." His crew chief, Chris Gayle, framed it the same way, in process rather than results. "We try to focus less on the results right now," Gayle said. "If you only decide your worth, how well you're doing, based on the result only, you leave here devastated week in, week out."
Hamlin won the first stage. Todd Gilliland, in the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, won the second for the first stage victory of his career. William Byron finished third in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. "This is probably the first time in four months that I've been able to drive the car this way," Byron said. John Hunter Nemechek was fourth in the No. 42 Legacy Motor Club Toyota, his first top-five of the season; he led a race-high 42 laps, more than he led in all of 2024 or all of 2025. Kyle Larson, who led early, finished fifth in the No. 5 Hendrick Chevrolet.
Christopher Bell, Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate in the No. 20 Toyota, gambled on fuel to try to steal the win. He led late, was passed by Hamlin with five laps remaining, and ran out of gas as the field took the white flag, finishing 26th. He did it with a cast on a broken left wrist, the result of a hard crash at Michigan a week earlier.
The Cup Series leaves the ovals next. Next Sunday brings the inaugural Anduril 250 at the Qualcomm Circuit on Naval Base Coronado in San Diego, the start of a road-course stretch Hamlin's own team has flagged as a relative weakness. The streak, and the 19 points, go with him.