KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For a NASCAR driver leading a race with the checkered flag in sight, there are no words they dread more than “we’re going to overtime.”
A late caution and overtime finish at Phoenix Raceway denied Denny Hamlin a chance at his first championship last fall, and an overtime finish bit him once more on Sunday (April 18) at Kansas Speedway.
Leader Tyler Reddick hit the wall in turns 3 and 4 and had a fuel problem with three laps to go, and that allowed Hamlin, who led a race-high 131 laps, to scoot by and reclaim the lead.
“Even when the No. 45 (Reddick) got around, I actually felt pretty confident I was still going to get back around him on the last lap, if I hadn’t already,” Hamlin said. “But he made the mistake coming to two to go there, and it allowed us to capitalize.”
Reddick stayed right with him after the mistake, but Hamlin kept the No. 45 car at bay and could see the white flag waving as he rounded turn 4 to complete the penultimate lap.
But before he could actually reach the start/finish line, Cody Ware spun on the apron in turn 4 to bring out the first and only caution in the entire race for an incident.
“From that point on, I just knew that chaos was going to happen,” Hamlin remarked.
NASCAR has begun the 2026 season by keeping races under green unless they were presented with a scenario where they absolutely had to throw a caution. But in this case, Hamlin had no issue with race control displaying a yellow.
“He was in the middle of the racetrack with cars going full speed,” Hamlin said.
What Hamlin was bewildered by, however, was that fact that Ware managed to spin at the pace he was going.
“I don’t even know how it’s possible at that speed.”
Upon further review of the No. 51 team’s communications, it appears that Ware was nursing a flat right rear tire when his car finally spun around.
The caution for Ware led to one final round of pit stops, and unlike the championship race at Phoenix last fall, Hamlin exited pit road with the lead as everyone elected to put on four tires.
He still had control for the restart, but unfortunately for him, he immediately got swallowed up on the final restart.
Kyle Larson restarted behind Hamlin on the inside row, and instead of pushing the No. 11, Larson laid back so that he could put Hamlin three-wide heading into turn 1 and take the lead himself. The move worked, and Larson exited the first two turns with a massive lead, but he wasn’t unable to hold off a charging Reddick on the final lap, who went on to score his fifth win in the first nine races of the season.
Sunday’s ending was deja vu for Hamlin to the Kansas spring race two years ago, as he started first on the inside line for the final restart, only for Larson put him three-wide heading into turn 1. Unlike Sunday, Larson went on to win that one.
With the same fate befalling Hamlin once again, the 2024 finish was a moment that he immediately recalled on pit road.
“I got beat by that a few years ago, and I just knew in my mind that the top (lane) was the place to be,” Hamlin said. “But the numbers say bottom.”
Hamlin went with the numbers, but once again, the numbers didn’t compute.
“In these green-white-checkered scenarios, you can throw those numbers out,” Hamlin remarked. “Everything is just so different.”
Overtime finishes have been especially unkind to Hamlin since 2023, as he’s now lost six races, including three at Kansas alone, that he would’ve won had they ended at the scheduled distance. On the flip side, he’s only won two races in overtime that he wouldn’t have won had the ended at the scheduled distance, which means that overtime has effectively subtracted four Cup wins from his total in the last three seasons.
Hamlin leaves Kansas second in the 2026 Cup Series points standings behind Reddick, but with 2027 likely serving as his last season, every near miss hurts more than the last as the races continue to tick down.
But all that’s left to be done for Hamlin, as well as any driver in his position, is to set his sights on the next race of the calendar.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf