MARTINSVILLE, Va. — At the track he loves to dominate, Denny Hamlin was back on top with a new face atop his pit box.
The Joe Gibbs Racing star ended an agonizing 10-year winless streak at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, holding off teammate Christopher Bell in his home state to secure a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
Hamlin, who was raised a few hours away in the Richmond suburb of Chesterfield, leads active Cup Series drivers with six victories at Martinsville. However, this was his first checkered flag on the 0.526-mile oval in southwestern Virginia since March 29, 2015, and also his first overall with crew chief Chris Gayle, who joined the JGR No. 11 Toyota team this season.
Driving a Camry that “certainly felt like the old days” after the team overhauled its setup, Hamlin led a race-high 274 of the 400 laps and was up front for good after taking the lead from Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott with 74 to go.
With the 55th victory of his Cup Series career (tying NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Rusty Wallace for 11th on the all-time wins list), the 44-year-old Hamlin also snapped a 31-race winless streak since last April at Delaware’s Dover Motor Speedway.
“Chris Gayle, all the engineers, the pit crew, everybody really just deciding they were going to come here with a different approach than the last few years,” Hamlin said. “It was just amazing. It did everything I needed it to do. Just so happy to win with Chris. Gosh, I love winning here.”
Gayle was a surprise replacement for longtime crew chief Chris Gabehart, who moved into an executive role at JGR after helping Hamlin to 23 victories from 2019-24. Gayle said the team told him of the move just before informing Hamlin.
“It was probably a shock to Denny, obviously,” Gayle said. “Gabehart had been with him for a while. They’d been successful. But they were making changes at JGR for the betterment of the whole (four-car organization). I know Denny was probably apprehensive about, ‘I don’t want to start over at my age, don’t want a new team.’ “
In what he called a “very unique” arrangement, Gayle was moved into the position without any other significant personnel changes on the No. 11 team. Surrounded by familiar faces, Hamlin said he has meshed well with Gayle, who previously was the crew chief for Ty Gibbs.
“Chris has had a tough go of it,” Hamlin said. “When we didn’t have a great weekend, social media people were just out to get him. They think he’s been the problem for all of these years. It’s just not the case. He’s had the tough task of having such young drivers his whole career. That is really hard to do. I think having someone as laid-back as I am for the first time in his career is probably making his job a lot easier.”
Bell, who leads the Cup Series with three wins in 2025, finished second after starting from the pole position, and Bubba Wallace took third for 23XI Racing as Toyotas swept the top three. Hamlin co-owns the 23XI team with six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan and Curtis Polk, the basketball legend’s business manager.
Elliott and Hendrick teammate Kyle Larson rounded out the top five in Chevrolets. Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain was sixth in another Chevy, and the highest finish for a Ford driver came from seventh-place Ryan Preece of RFK Racing.
“It was a great weekend for Joe Gibbs Racing,” said Bell, who had finished outside the top 10 the past two weeks at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. “Showed a lot of pace. Really happy to get back up front. The last two weeks have been rough. Really happy for Denny. He’s the Martinsville master. Second is not that bad.”
Hamlin had to survive four restarts — and a few strong challenges from Bell — in the final 125 laps as Martinsville produced the typical short-track skirmishes between several drivers.
The most notable multicar collision involved Gibbs and fellow Toyota driver Tyler Reddick of 23XI, who had a civil discussion in the pits after the race
Team Penske’s Joey Logano was collected in an incident with JGR’s Chase Briscoe that caused the 10th and final caution. Logano, a three-time Cup Series champion, put the blame on Chastain for squeezing Briscoe, who then ran into Logano while trying to get back at Chastain.
“Ross just sticking it in a tight spot,” Logano said. “He did it to me on the restart before. (Chastain) just races like a jackass every week, and I keep paying the price. I’m sick of paying the price.”
Wallace tied a season best with his third-place finish and improved to eighth in the points standings but was left lamenting his lack of speed on restarts after being unable to pressure Hamlin.
“My restarts were terrible,” Wallace said. “One of my best traits, so I need to go back and study that. The final restart, I let that second get away. I don’t know if I had anything for Denny. It would have been fun to try. But all in all, a hell of a day for Toyota.”
Two hours after the race, NASCAR officials announced Erik Jones’ Legacy Motor Club No. 43 Toyota was disqualified for failing to meet the minimum weight requirement. Originally credited with 24th place, Jones was reclassified in 38th and had 18 points deducted from his total.
NASCAR also took the cars of Jones and Kaulig Racing’s Ty Dillon to its R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for further inspection.
The Cup Series will race next Sunday at historic Darlington Raceway, the South Carolina track that will celebrate a “throwback weekend” that encourages teams to feature vintage paint schemes and crew uniforms.
It’s the first of two annual races on the 1.366-mile oval that dates to 1950. RFK Racing’s Brad Keselowski won last year’s throwback race, and Briscoe won the Southern 500 last September.