By David Morgan, Associate Editor
LEBANON, Tenn. – Get Denny Hamlin his guitar, he had to earn this one.
After starting Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway on the pole, his night took a nose dive immediately after it started when he was handed a pass-through penalty for jumping the start, dropping him to the back of the 38-car field.
But Hamlin would methodically work his way forward throughout the attrition filled race, eventually breaking back into the top-10 by the end of the second stage as he continued to march back toward the lead.
With the race seemingly coming down to a fuel mileage battle between Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell and Zane Smith, Hamlin appeared to be headed toward a top-five finish before a caution with 13 laps to go breathed new life into Hamlin’s quest for the Gibson guitar handed out to the winner.
Once things cycled out, Hamlin would line up third on the final restart with Bell and another JGR teammate in Chase Briscoe ahead of him as the three Toyotas were prepared to settle the race amongst themselves.
Bell got the jump on the restart, but by the time they reached the backstretch, Hamlin was alongside and challenging. Multiple times over the course of those final laps, Bell would edge out ahead and then Hamlin would do the same, while Briscoe waited in the wings behind them hoping to pounce should either of them make a mistake.
Coming to take the white flag, they were three-wide at the line, with Briscoe on the outside, Bell sandwiched in the middle and Hamlin on the inside.
One false move could have spelled disaster, but they sorted themselves out by them reached the backstretch as Hamlin took advantage and powered out in front, keeping a hard-charging Bell behind him.
Bell made one last lunge into Turn 3, but it wouldn’t be enough as Hamlin maintained control and hustled back to the finish to score his first win at Nashville and bank a second win on the season.
"Things worked out nicely for me." @dennyhamlin watches the final lap of Nashville 😅 pic.twitter.com/9j8g1vKREY
— Sports on Prime (@SportsonPrime) June 1, 2026
“Well, I think the 20 and the 19 were battling so hard on the first corner, just let me get to the inside of the 20 on the first corner there on the restart. From there, side by side with the 20. He drove in so deep on that last lap into 1, but it allowed me to barely clear off of 2,” Hamlin said as he described the battle for the win with his teammates.
“Man, what an unbelievable day — starting first, going to last, and back to first.”
As far as that penalty that could have derailed his whole day at the start of the race, Hamlin took full credit for being a little too eager when the green flag dropped.
“I definitely jumped the start, no doubt about that,” Hamlin said with a laugh. “Yeah, just looking back on it, just didn’t wait quite long enough.”
The win now moves Hamlin within one victory of tying the late Kyle Busch on the all-time wins list, something he explained that he didn’t foresee happening when the two were at the top of their game together, but he credited Busch with helping get to where he is now in his career.
“You know, I thought about it and certainly aspired to eventually get there,” said Hamlin. “I knew my career was going to end before his career was going to end, and we didn’t know what was going to happen, but I had kind of resigned to the fact that I thought we weren’t going to overtake Kyle, and we still might not. We don’t know if this is the last one. We don’t know.
“Yeah, it just shows how good he was for so long. I saw the stats online where we ran together 500-and-some races, and he finished ahead of me ten more times than I beat him in the same equipment.”
The driver who was Kyle Busch's teammate the longest, @dennyhamlin, delivers a bow for a Rowdy. pic.twitter.com/1cBAlBYnqK
— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) June 1, 2026
“He certainly taught me a lot. He was by far — it was interesting too, I mean, you see so many tributes and people have stories that you just didn’t know. Then I didn’t realize just a few months ago he had a Q&A, and he asked who has he learned the most from teammate-wise, and he said me, and I was like that made me feel good. I didn’t realize that he had said that.
“Yeah, it as an honor to be his teammate for 15 years. He raised my game. Without him as teammate, there’s no way I win the races I win, especially the ones like today.”
Bell would finish the night as the runner-up, with Briscoe giving JGR a 1-2-3 sweep.
Afterwards, Bell was defeated about letting the win slip through his fingers, shouldering the blame for it not being his DeWalt Toyota that was in Victory Lane instead of Hamlin.
“I just didn’t get it done. That’s all there is to it,” Bell said. “Yeah, I needed to not let Denny get beside me on the restart. I was focused on getting clear into [Turn] 1, and I opened the door and Denny got right inside of me, and then it was going to be a drag race from there.
“There’s nothing, there’s nobody to blame, no circumstances. It was all completely in my hands and I dropped the ball. So, there’s literally nobody that had anything to do with losing the race except me, and it sucks.”
Heather Gibbs, who represented the JGR ownership group in the post-race press conference, explained that it was a bit nerve-wracking to watch three of her drivers going at it, but she was happy to see them come out of it unscathed with the win.
“Hat’s off to everybody at the shop because I think coming to the track with such fast race cars, it’s incredible to see them up there throughout the entire race,” said Gibbs.
“Yeah, it’s kind of like your kids in a family vacation in the backseat. You’re swatting at each other watching them. Really, really proud of all of them. They stayed clean. No one has marching orders where they’re like back off, let that one win. They’re allowed — we want them to race for the win. That’s what they do, and it makes us proud. So we couldn’t be happier.”
Behind the three JGR Toyotas, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. posted his best non-superspeedway finish of the season with a fourth-place run, taking advantage of the late caution to bolt on four fresh Goodyears and charging inside the top-five when the checkered flag fell.
Likewise for Shane van Gisbergen, who scored the best oval finish of his Cup Series career with a fifth-place result, holding his own throughout the night on the 1.33-mile concrete oval where he led 12 laps and continues to hone in his oval track skills.
Current Cup Series points leader Tyler Reddick would come home in sixth-place, finding his 23XI Toyota wadded up into the outside wall at the finish after getting turned by Chase Elliott, who finished in seventh.
The remainder of the top-10 went to Ryan Blaney, Zane Smith, and Carson Hocevar.
With the second half of the regular season now underway, the Cup Series heads north for the next race on the schedule at Michigan International Speedway, the fast two-mile oval where speed is king.
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