Despite being at a disadvantage on tires over the final runs of the race, Denny Hamlin put on a defensive driving clinic to go back-to-back at Dover Motor Speedway, winning the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 for the second year in a row. Hamlin’s win on Sunday is the 58th of his Cup career and his fourth of 2025, giving him more wins than any other driver in Cup this season.
Following his final pit stop, Hamlin was left with tires that were several laps older than Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell’s, putting him at a disadvantage on grip as Bell began to close in. With the threat of rain looming and the laps winding down, Hamlin began making his car wide, doing all he could to block the flow of clean air to Bell’s and bog him down in dirty air off his car.
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Hamlin held on long enough to be out front when the rains came, but the shower passed quickly enough that it allowed NASCAR to dry the racetrack and run the final 13 laps. Hamlin fought off Bell again on a restart — in a battle that ended with Bell spinning off turn 4 — but he was quickly confronted with another JGR teammate in Chase Briscoe, who had pitted for fresh tires after the red flag lifted and went on a tear all the way to second by double overtime.
Briscoe was able to drive alongside Hamlin on the final restart, but couldn’t clear him before getting loose to Hamlin’s inside coming to the white flag. That break in momentum was all Hamlin needed to drive away on the final lap and complete his Dover defense.
“Winning here in Dover is super special to me,” Hamlin told TNT Sports. “This is a place that I have not been very good for at the first half of my career. And to have back-to-back over the last few years is amazing. … I just studied some of the greats here. I was very fortunate to have Martin Truex as a teammate, Jimmie Johnson, watching him win 10 times here… You learn from the greats and you change your game to match them, and you have success like this.”
Briscoe would have to settle for second, followed by Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson and Ty Gibbs rounding out the top five. The rest of the top 10 consisted of Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Blaney, Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski, with Wallace’s seventh-place finish being particularly important. Wallace’s top 10 finish and overtime troubles for Ryan Preece (who finished 19th) allowed Wallace to pad his advantage over the playoff cut line to 16 points with five races to go in the regular season.
Meanwhile, the final laps saw a massive development in the In-Season Challenge and the continuation of the tournament’s biggest Cinderella story. After a race-long battle in his semifinal matchup with John Hunter Nemechek, Ty Dillon would finally gain the edge when he received the free pass after the first caution of overtime, putting him back on the lead lap while Nemechek remained a lap down.
With a 20th-place finish, Dillon — the No. 32 and final seed in the In-Season Challenge — advanced to the final round of the tournament, where he will race Gibbs (who won his matchup against Tyler Reddick) for a $1 million prize in next weekend’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.
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Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 results
- #11 – Denny Hamlin
- #19 – Chase Briscoe
- #48 – Alex Bowman
- #5 – Kyle Larson
- #54 – Ty Gibbs
- #9 – Chase Elliott
- #23 – Bubba Wallace
- #12 – Ryan Blaney
- #17 – Chris Buescher
- #6 – Brad Keselowski
- #8 – Kyle Busch
- #45 – Tyler Reddick
- #71 – Michael McDowell
- #22 – Joey Logano
- #3 – Austin Dillon
- #2 – Austin Cindric
- #7 – Justin Haley
- #20 – Christopher Bell
- #60 – Ryan Preece
- #10 – Ty Dillon
- #42 – John Hunter Nemechek
- #38 – Zane Smith
- #47 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- #35 – Riley Herbst (R)
- #34 – Todd Gilliland
- #99 – Daniel Suarez
- #43 – Erik Jones
- #21 – Josh Berry
- #41 – Cole Custer
- #88 – Shane van Gisbergen (R)
- #24 – William Byron
- #4 – Noah Gragson
- #1 – Ross Chastain
- #44 – J.J. Yeley
- #77 – Carson Hocevar
- #51 – Cody Ware
- #16 – A.J. Allmendinger
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