DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Denny Hamlin came to the Daytona 500 determined to honor his late car owner with a victory.
He delivered with a storybook tribute for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Hamlin won the NASCAR Cup Series' blockbuster season opener for the second time in four years Sunday, leading JGR drivers to a 1-2-3 sweep of the podium after the race went to overtime. The race and the season have been dedicated to J.D. Gibbs, Joe Gibbs' eldest son who died last month after battling a degenerative neurological disease.
J.D. helped his father start the race team, ran it while Joe was coaching the NFL's Washington Redskins, changed tires on the pit crew for the team's first Daytona 500 victory and discovered Hamlin during a test session at Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina. Hamlin was hired to drive the No. 11 - the number J.D. wore when he played football - and J.D.'s name is on the Toyota.
When Hamlin stopped his car along the frontstretch to collect the checkered flag Sunday night, he immediately credited J.D. Gibbs.
"The whole family, they did so much for me over the course of my career, and this one is for J.D," Hamlin said. "We are desperately going to miss him the rest of our lives. His legacy still lives on through Joe Gibbs Racing ... proud to do this for them."
Hamlin was met in victory lane by the entire Gibbs family, including J.D.'s widow Melissa and their four sons.
"He meant a lot to me, and it's hard for me not getting choked up because I've been choked up about 100 times about it," Hamlin said. "Just to have Melissa and all the kids here, it's just crazy."
Joe Gibbs, the Hall of Fame coach with three Super Bowl victories, ranked the tribute win to his son first in his career accomplishments. J.D. encouraged his father to move the team from a crowded Chevrolet camp to become Toyota's flagship team in 2008, and the Daytona 500 victory was the 100th for JGR in a Camry.
"It is the most emotional and biggest win I've ever had in my life, in anything," Gibbs said. "It was the most important night in my occupational life."
Kyle Busch and Erik Jones finished second and third as JGR became the second team ever to sweep the Daytona 500 podium. Hendrick Motorsports did it in 1997 with Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven.
Busch, now winless in 14 tries at "The Great American Race," was initially openly disappointed in falling short.
"He's got two, I've got none, and that's just the way it goes sometimes," Busch said.
But he reiterated the JGR and Toyota goals of working together to win the race and noted he didn't have much of a shot at beating Hamlin because the field had been decimated by a flurry of late accidents.
"Was trying to make sure one of us gets to victory lane, first and foremost," Busch said. "There wasn't enough cars out there running at the end. I don't know how it would have played out."
The Cup Series slogged through three uninspiring nonpoints races during Speedweeks to cause concern regarding a potentially disappointing main event. Jim France, who took over as chairman of NASCAR last August, used the pre-race driver meeting to ask the drivers to liven up the activity. Hamlin and Chase Elliott were the rare drivers to use the bottom lane in the exhibition Clash and the twin qualifying races as the rest of the field ran single-file along the top.
"I hope a few of you drivers out there will get down on the bottom with Denny and Chase and put on a good show today," France told the field.
The drivers obeyed and delivered an action-packed and wreck-filled opener.
There was an accident on pit road, a 21-car crash, 12 cautions and five wrecks in the final 20 laps of regulation. The race was stopped twice for cleanup totaling nearly 40 minutes in the final stretch. During the second red flag, one of NASCAR's track-drying trucks broke down while cleaning oil off the racing surface.
Hamlin and Busch alternated as the leaders during the handful of late restarts, and the final rush to the checkered flag was a push to hold off Ford driver and 2018 Cup Series champion Joey Logano of Team Penske. The Ford camp went 1-2-3 in both of Thursday's qualifying races and was favored to win Sunday.
Logano, who started his career at JGR, settled for fourth but took a moment to honor J.D. Gibbs.
"I'm not a Gibbs driver, but what J.D. has done for my career is the reason why I'm sitting here today," Logano said. "As bad as I want to win it, it is pretty cool to think that the first race after his passing, to see those guys 1-2-3, it just says he's up there watching and maybe gave the guys a little extra boost there at the end."
Front Row Motorsports' Michael McDowell was fifth in a Ford but aggravated Logano by not working with him in the two-lap overtime sprint to the finish.
"I just told him that my team doesn't pay me to push Joey Logano to a win," McDowell said.
Germain Racing's Ty Dillon was sixth in the highest-finishing Chevrolet.
The race featured eight drivers making their Daytona 500 debuts, and Ryan Preece, a short track driver from New England, was best in that class with an eighth-place finish. Ross Chastain, the eighth-generation watermelon farmer who lost his main ride for this year when the FBI raided his sponsor right before Christmas, finished 10th.
Jamie McMurray, the race's 2010 winner, led six laps and was in the mix until he was collected in one of the late accidents. He finished 22nd in his final event before retirement.
Hendrick Motorsports' William Byron and Alex Bowman formed the youngest front row in race history, but the Chevy drivers had little to show for it after the race. The 25-year-old Bowman finished 11th and Byron, the 21-year-old pole-sitter, was 21st.
After he endured his first winless season in the Cup Series last year, Hamlin got a new crew chief in the offseason. When he won the Daytona 500 in 2016, it was his debut race with crew chief Mike Wheeler, and this victory came in his first race with Chris Gabehart.
Hamlin's 2016 win was in a photo finish against Martin Truex Jr., and the celebration was a blur.
This one, he said, he will enjoy.
"I think I was so dumbfounded about everything that happened the first time with the photo finish and everything," Hamlin said. "This one lets me soak it in a little bit more. I'm going to have a terrible hangover tomorrow, but I'm going to enjoy it the rest of my life."