Nashville Superspeedway put on another great race weekend with some exciting finishes. One of them being the final 4 laps of the Cracker Barrel 400 NASCAR Cup Series race.

Due to the weather, Cup Qualifying was canceled, and the starting lineup was set by the rule book, which put Denny Hamlin on the pole.

With the Joe Gibbs Racing Progressive Toyota as the control car, Denny Hamlin would do something he has never done before: commit a restart/start violation, which would penalize the No.11 with a pass-through penalty.

Hamlin would quickly go from first to last just 3 laps into the event. Luckily, Hamlin would stay on the lead lap when the Lap 35 competition caution would fly. Hamlin did not capture any stage points in the opening stage, trying to recover from the early race penalty.

Hamlin slowly made his way through the field, capturing stage points in Stage 2 and running in the top 5 in the final stage. It looked like Hamlin had a 3rd place finishing car as his JGR teammate, Christopher Bell, appeared to be on his way to his first win of the 2026 season, when a late race caution for the 17 of Chris Buescher would change everything.

Hamlin would be one of the cars that would stay out and keep track position. The restart would see 3 of the Joe Gibbs Toyotas, Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and Bell, battle hard for the checkered flag.

Briscoe would have a front-row seat as Hamlin and Bell would battle side by side in the final 4 laps. That allowed Briscoe to get quite a run on both the 11 and 20 as all 3 Toyotas would be three-wide coming to the white flag, which saw Hamlin clear both Bell and Briscoe as he captured his 2nd points win of 2026 and 62nd of his Cup Series career.

Hamlin now heads to Michigan this weekend, still 2nd in the standings as he closed the gap to Tyler Reddick from -122 to -97 after Nashville.

The next two races (Michigan and Pocono) have been great tracks for Hamlin in his career, as he enters Michigan with 13 top-five finishes, 20 top 10 finishes, 300 laps led, and 3 career wins.

At Pocono, Hamlin leads active drivers in top-fives(16), top-10’s(23), laps led (858), and 7 wins, which is most all-time at the “Tricky Triangle” which includes 3 wins in the last 8 races.

The next two weeks, Denny Hamlin has a great opportunity to close the gap between himself and Reddick in the point standings, as Hamlin has been consistent all season long.

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