In twenty-one years he'd never won three straight. At 45, at the track he's owned for two decades, he finally did — and passed a legend on the way.
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Watch your inbox at 12 PM ET race day. Free · one email per race week · out anytime Denny Hamlin has been winning races for twenty-one years. He has won the Daytona 500 three times.
He has 64 of them now. He’s a future first-ballot Hall of Famer who has done damn near everything this sport has to offer. He had never won three races in a row.
At Pocono Raceway — the track he has owned since the day he showed up — the 45-year-old put the No. 11 on the pole, won the first stage, ran down the fastest early car, and closed out a fuel-and-tire chess match in the final laps to win the Great American Getaway 400. It was his third straight Cup victory after Nashville and Michigan, and for the first time in a career older than some of the drivers he’s beating, Denny Hamlin has a three-race winning streak.
This was not a hot streak built on luck. This was the best driver at the best track of his life, in the form of his life, refusing to let go of the wheel. And when the checkered flag fell, the all-time Pocono wins leader had win number eight at the Tricky Triangle and number 64 of his career — sole possession of ninth on the all-time list.
I had to outlive him to tie him. This was the fastest car, full stop Let’s kill any idea that Hamlin backed into this one. He won the pole by .057 over Kyle Larson.
He led the opening stage. Yes, Larson jumped him on the initial start and paced the first 24 laps — but Hamlin, the long-run master, reeled him back in through traffic and made a clean pass down the frontstretch on Lap 24 to retake control. That’s not a lucky winner.
That’s the best car methodically taking over. Larson faded to fifth — the fastest car early, but not the one there at the end. He’s now winless in 19 career Pocono starts.
The speed was real. The result, again, wasn’t. Bell drove 400 miles one-handed and broke our hearts Christopher Bell raced Sunday with a fractured left wrist — the souvenir from the hardest hit of the Next Gen era at Michigan a week earlier — in a car his team rebuilt around the injury so he could drive essentially one-handed.
“I’m full commit,” he’d said. And he nearly stole the whole thing. Bell’s crew rolled the dice on fuel, trying to run the final 52 laps on one tank.
He inherited the lead and stretched it past ten seconds, riding fuel-save math toward a storybook win. But fuel-save math has a hard floor, and Hamlin had fresher tires. The gap evaporated.
Hamlin retook the lead with five laps to go. And on the run to the white flag, Bell’s tank went dry — he had to limp to pit road for a splash of fuel, dropping to 26th. A broken wrist, a ten-second lead, and an empty tank.
There’s no crueler sport. The name on the rock Before the green flag, fans painted a rock at Pocono with two numbers: “18 8.” A tribute to the late Kyle Busch. Hamlin’s 64th win moved him past Busch’s 63 for sole possession of ninth on the all-time wins list — the number he’d tied just a week before.
He won his first Cup race here in 2006 from the pole as a rookie, then swept the second Pocono race that summer too — only the second rookie in Cup history to sweep both races at a single track in one season. The undercard Stage 2 came apart fast. Zane Smith pounded the inside wall early — second straight week wasting a strong car, this time 37th.
Out of the chaos, Todd Gilliland stretched his fuel 44 laps to win Stage 2 — the first stage win of his career. And don’t miss Legacy Motor Club: John Hunter Nemechek led a season-high 42 laps — the organization’s best since 2013 — and finished fourth, with Erik Jones sixth. The title race is closing in Tyler Reddick has led every set of standings through sixteen races.
He brought a 51-point cushion to Pocono. He leaves with 19. Hamlin has won four of the last five and is hunting the number-one seed.
The next two weeks are road courses — San Diego, then Sonoma — historically the soft spot in his game. Watch that gap. We saw the master coming We built the bet card around a simple read: Hamlin from the pole, at his track, in the best form of his life, was the anchor — sized like conviction at +200.
The card went 3-for-8 and still finished green, because the anchor was right and the anchor was big. That’s the whole game. You don’t need to hit everything.
You need to be right about the one that matters — and the one that mattered was a 45-year-old chasing a piece of history he’d never touched, and finally catching it.