DARLINGTON, S.C. — It was a strong night for all of the Toyota Chase contenders on Sunday, Sept. 6 at Darlington Raceway. Five of the six Toyota drivers within the postseason field finished in the top eight after the 500-mile endurance race.
The only one that didn’t was the points leader himself Denny Hamlin. By the end of the evening, Hamlin saw his points lead shrink by 13 points after a run-in with Michael McDowell and the Darlington wall in the final stage of the race.
“It definitely wasn’t a mistake free night for sure,” Hamlin said to media post-race. “We got our car pretty good to end stage two. That’s where we got the car the best, ran down quite a few of those guys.
“Then we had the damage at that third stage break. So, we never really got to see it all the way through.”
Hamlin was perhaps the strongest looking Chase contender entering the postseason when the NASCAR Cup Series field arrived at Darlington on Sunday. With four wins in a regular season that resulted in the first-place seed for The Chase and the 25-points buffer that comes with it, 2026 had been starting to feel like the year for Hamlin.
When the green flag waved for the Southern 500, Hamlin still looked like the strongest contender, too. By lap 3, the No. 11 Toyota was in the lead after starting fourth. Hamlin led 68 laps en route to finishing third in stage one and fourth in stage two, picking up 15 extra stage points.
What he didn’t know at the time, was those points would becoming crucial in his points lead defense. Only four laps into the final stage, McDowell tagged the back end of Hamlin’s Toyota, fishtailing him into the outside wall while exiting turn 4.
“[McDowell] was struggling on the restart,” Hamlin recalled. “It looked like it was really tight. I went in there, slid him, but I didn’t check up a lot. … I did check up some, and I just didn’t get cut a break there.
Frontstretch did reach out for comment with McDowell, but he declined.
“Those are the kind of incidents that I’ve avoided for the most part this year, but you know, it was avoidable, but it also is part of everybody fighting for their own finishing position.”
The 21-year Cup veteran immediately felt something was wrong, reporting to his crew chief Chris Gayle his toe link was broken. For a painful 40 laps, Hamlin nursed his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota around the track over 1.5 seconds off the pace, waiting for a caution and eventually losing a lap. On lap 284, however, he finally got his yellow and brought the Toyota to pit road so the team could finally make the repairs to his toe link.
Except it turned out it wasn’t the toe link that was broken, but the team did finally get the car back onto track and up to speed.
“Just a lot of bent parts,” Hamlin said when asked what he saw under the hood post-race. “Obviously, just hitting the wall there just destroyed stuff on the front end, the back end, everywhere. They did a good job of at least making it manageable.”
Hamlin got his lap back with a wave around and even managed to recover to an 18-place finish.
But still, it could’ve gone way better for a driver who has five Cup wins at Darlington and was looking for a sixth.
“It could have gone either way,” Hamlin commented. “It was a missed opportunity, but also could have been worse. I’m thankful that the wreck happened after the first two stages, so we could at least come away with something out of the day.
“But yeah, this is a track that we every year run good at, and to finish 18th, that is certainly far below what we expect to have when we come here, but this thing’s going to be made or break over mistakes and those are the kind I felt like I’ve avoided all year.”
Hamlin, with nine races left in The Chase, remains 12 points ahead of JGR teammate and Darlington winner Christopher Bell. Thankfully for him, however, he’ll travel to World Wide Technology Raceway next weekend, a track he’s the defending race winner at.
“Certainly not the night we needed,” Hamlin said. “Probably, we would have contended for the win, obviously, and didn’t. But we’ll just pick ourselves up and go to St. Louis and do it.”
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
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