Denny Hamlin scores rare road course top-5 in Chicago

CHICAGO — Denny Hamlin’s road course woes have subsided some with a fourth -place finish during Sunday’s Grant Park 165.

In his only other road course start in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, Hamlin finished 21st at Circuit of the Americas. The birth of his child kept him away from the other road course race before Chicago – in Mexico City.

While Hamlin has a Cup road course win, back in 2016 at Watkins Glen, he had just 14 top five finishes, 20 top-10s and an average finish of 16.7 in 57 career road/street course starts before Chicago.

In the NextGen era, it was worse – no top-10s and an average finish of 20.8 in 18 starts.

On Sunday, Hamlin said his car had the pace to justify his first top-10 finish on a left- and right-turn course in the NextGen era.

“I’ve got to thank the whole team for working hard to kind of get us back to where we were running there. Truthfully, that’s where we were at on pace. It wasn’t a crazy strategy or anything like that. Just thought the car was really, really good,” Hamlin said.

Chris Gayle became Hamlin’s crew chief Joe Gibbs Racing promoted Chris Gabehart to the role of competition director. Under Gayle’s watch, Ty Gibbs had shown road course speed – and now Hamlin is too.

“I’ve got to give great credit to Chris Gayle (crew chief),” Hamlin said. “Obviously, yesterday went really rough. Just not one of those days we needed and today we bounced back and executed good. One of the first green races where we didn’t have any issues on a road course. This is the kind of finish and kind of pace we need to have.”

Hamlin started Sunday’s race in 40th after he blew an engine in practice Saturday. A long wait to throw a caution for Josh Berry crashing gave Hamlin an opportunity to pit on around lap 30 of 75. It also boosted Hamlin to a sixth-place stage finish in stage two on lap 45.

Hamlin ran long, leaving him to save fuel and tires and hold his ground in the top five.

“Once I was able to get toward the front, I could save and take it easy on my tires,” Hamlin said. “I would’ve loved to have been on equal tires just to see how far off I was from the front two guys. It just didn’t seem like that much.”

Hamlin will see if he can continue his road course speed Sunday, July 13. The NASCAR Cup Series will race in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway.

The green flag is set to fly at 3:30 p.m. ET on TNT/Max, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and Performance Racing Network affiliates.