By Aaron Bearden

A breakdown of Sunday’s Würth 400 at Dover Motor Speedway, the 11th race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Main Takeaway

Denny Hamlin called his shot. 

The three-time Daytona 500 winner felt good about his odds coming to Dover Motor Speedway – and for good reason. In a year when his organization (Joe Gibbs Racing) is one of two that are dominating all non-superspeedway races, Hamlin’s been the company’s most prolific winner. 

After catching the public eye with a strong presence in the Netflix docuseries “NASCAR: Full Speed,” Hamlin triumphed in the opening exhibition at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He’s since rattled off three wins in the opening 11 points races, tying him with Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron for the most victories in the Cup Series. 

That’s tied with 2010 for the most wins Hamlin’s ever had at this stage in the season. If that year seems notable, it’s because it is. The Virginian’s 2010 campaign was arguably his best, an eight-win season where he came oh-so close to securing his first Cup title. 

At the time it seemed obvious that Hamlin would someday hoist up the Cup Series’ championship trophy. But he’s never quite gotten over the hump, despite making multiple Championship 4 appearances and rising to a tie with Lee Petty for 12th on the tour’s all-time wins list. 

Hamlin doesn’t define his career by the lack of a title. In fact, the veteran believes he’s better than some drivers that have won the Cup. 

“I know that I’m a championship-caliber driver,” he said Sunday. “I’ll just say it. I think there’s been worse drivers win a championship than me. I just feel that way just because of things that have worked out.

“It’s different. Find one driver saying that championships are the same as they were 10 years ago, it’s just not. I care about wins and winning every single week because in the end I absolutely would take 60-some wins and no championship over 20 and one. It’s just not even close.”

He isn’t wrong to point out the changes of the past decade. The championship has shifted from a 10-race marathon to three quick elimination rounds and a final one-race sprint. 

The way drivers and teams race and win has also changed numerous times. In the final 550-horsepower era of the Gen 6 car and the current Next Gen era, aero blocking has emerged as a key factor in leaders holding onto the top spot. The lead driver tries to run the line of the trailing, faster car, trapping it in dirty air and impacting the aggressor’s ability to get a run and complete an overtake. 

While he doesn’t consider himself the best at the tactic, Hamlin utilized it perfectly to fend off a hard-charing Kyle Larson in the closing laps of Sunday’s race. You can see in the clip of the final lap that Hamlin rolls the middle. He can then see the lane that Larson runs and shift his car up that way to trap his No. 5 in dirty air. 

“Honestly, we’re running a car that just hates being in traffic,” Hamlin said. “It does not like being behind another car. That’s why it races really well on tracks that are really wide because the second-place guy can go whenever the leader is not.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game. Sometimes you start the corner here, you drive up when you see all you need to do is get him to cross your wake and you know you’re going to send his car off track.

“It’s a product of the car. It just happens at all tracks now. I think it happened five years ago when we went to the intermediate package that we went to.” 

Larson said there was little he could do in the closing laps. The 2021 Cup champ feels aero blocking is an overpowered advantage at many tracks, bolstered by the ease of watching trailing drivers with the Next Gen car’s rearview camera. 

‘It’s just so easy for them to maneuver their car and shut off the air behind him,” Larson said.

“I don’t think (Hamlin) did anything special, but he was able to run in the middle of the racetrack and close me off on the top,” he later added. “If I ever pulled to the bottom, he could pull down and shut off my air. It’s just a product of the car and all that. We did what we could. I just wish I wouldn’t have given up the lead.”

Larson feels the only chance for trailing drivers to improve their odds would be for NASCAR to remove the rear-view camera available on the digital dashboard of the Next Gen car. That would make seeing the trailing car more difficult and require lead drivers to focus on feedback from their spotter.

But Hamlin doesn’t believe that change would have much impact on the outcome of these battles.

“”I feel like personally if I take my eyes off the road for a second, I take it to the camera, I’ll miss my line,” Hamlin said. “I kind of rely more on the spotter to defend than I do the actual camera just simply because I don’t think I’m good enough to drive and look backwards.”

The 23XI Racing co-owner added that he wouldn’t change anything with the dash because “the spotters would tell you where to drive.”

“I’d rather fix the car or tire or something.”

Good, Bad and Ugly

Good: Kyle Busch looks like a contender

It’s been an up-and-mostly-down year for Kyle Busch and the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team. After winning often in the early stages of the 2023 season, the squad has regressed to the playoff bubble in its second year together. 

But Busch looked like a contender again in Dover. The two-time Cup champ earned the pole, spent most of the race hovering in the top-10 and marched from eighth to fourth in the final run to tally a fourth-place result. 

The result was Busch’s second top-10 in the past three races. But more importantly it was the Nevadan’s first non-superspeedway top-five since Las Vegas in October. 

Fourth is still three spots short of where Busch and this team expect to finish. But they were at least back within sight of the lead. 

“I felt like today was a good day overall,” he said. “There are still things to clean up, but I’m proud of a top-five effort. It felt like if we would have restarted third, I might have been able to keep pace maybe somewhere closer to the front. But starting where I did and having to race the 10 was difficult. 

“I hate it for our guys that we didn’t get a better finish, but the FICO Camaro was good. Just struggled a bit on the long, long run.”

Bad: Wallace, Byron and Bell crash out

Zane Smith’s had a miserable start to his rookie year. The Trackhouse Racing prospect has struggled in his first Cup season for Spire Motorsports. Things have been so bad that Smith still sits 35th in the standings, behind Rick Ware Racing’s Kaz Grala, despite Grala sitting out Talladega. 

The 2022 Craftsman Truck Series champion was in position to score a decent result in Dover, but ended up catching some flack for a crash that eliminated a trio of playoff contenders. 

On Lap 330 Smith and Bubba Wallace were taken three-wide by Talladega winner Tyler Reddick. After contact between the bottom two, Smith drifted up the track and into Wallace, setting off a crash that also took out William Byron and Christopher Bell. 

Wallace came home 32nd, notching a second-consecutive DNF and dropping outside of the provisional playoff grid in 15th – Bell and Daniel Suarez are behind him in points but have wins. Byron and Bell were classified behind him in 33rd and 34th. 

“Not the result we needed – back-to-back DNF’s,” Wallace said. “Bootie (Barker, crew chief) said it perfect Monday. I was pissed off and frustrated after Talladega – he said, we are going to have to grind our asses off for Dover – from practice, to qualifying, to the race. It’s not going to be pretty. 

“I don’t think he meant that part – the wrecking out part was not going to be pretty, but we had to grind. I’m proud of the effort we put in every week, just unfortunate that we have no results to show for it. We will just go on to Kansas, where hopefully, we are not around any squirrels and go kick their ass.”

Byron said he “didn’t see much” before crashing out in 33rd. “We were rolling on the bottom and something happened up top. The No. 23 (Bubba Wallace) got spun across the track, and we were there.” 

The initial views of the crash on the FOX Sports broadcast made it appear Smith might be at fault for the accident. It wasn’t until an in-car camera angle from Corey LaJoie’s onboard was posted on social media that three-wide contact was proven to be the culprit. 

Smith went on to finish 24th, his best result since Circuit of the Americas in March. 

Ugly: Ryan Preece flames out early

Ryan Preece’s day took little time to go up in smoke. 

The former Whelen Modified Tour star was in the midst of his first run when smoke started to develop in the car. Preece’s No. 41 team tried to fix the issue – which it felt was tied to rubber buildup burning in the rocker – on a Lap 39 caution, but the issue persisted and Preece ultimately retired from the race after just 66 laps. 

 “I felt like I was on fire and I went the first 70 laps just trying to push through and then it got so bad that I couldn’t put my hands on the wheel,” he said. “I was worried that an oil line or something would melt and then the whole car gets engulfed in fire and I don’t want to be trapped in there having that happen, so I pulled off. 

“Whatever happened it was completely unnecessary and we can’t afford days like this.”

Preece was right about that. The 37th-place finish he was relegated to left the Connecticut native 28th in the standings, 102 points below the playoff cutline in a year already set back by an early penalty. 

Notes

  • Truck Series standout Corey Heim made his Cup Series debut Sunday, running in place of the injured Erik Jones for Legacy Motor Club. Heim wound up finishing 25th, though the result wasn’t fully indicative of his performance after Heim lost track position to a caution after he’d pitted under green. “We were beating the guys that finished 15th through 20th, so I think that’s kind of where we were supposed to end up – but that is part of racing,” he said. Disappointing result aside, a clean run was good for Heim in a car that was “a big change compared to what I’m used to.” 
  • Noah Gragson continues to impress with Stewart-Haas Racing. The Nevadan was arguably the biggest disappointment of the 2023 Cup season, but he’s notched four top-10s in 11 races this year. The latest two have come in consecutive weeks, elevating Gragson from 29th to 21st in the standings. He’d be 19th if it weren’t for a 35-point penalty levied to his team at Atlanta Motor Speedway. That’s not bad for a driver that only had two top-20 runs in 21 starts for Legacy Motor Club last year. 
  • Daniel Hemric also has consecutive top-10s. The 2021 Xfinity Series champ has finished ninth both times, rising from 31st to 25th in the standings as a result. That’s in line with where Justin Haley (26th) finished last season in the same car. 
  • Brad Keselowski left Dover below the cutline after spinning and finishing 30th in Sunday’s race. The 2012 Cup champ took full responsibility for the failure afterward. 

  • Tough break for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. The 2023 Daytona 500 winner looked like a strong contender for a top-10 before he was spun after late contact with Josh Berry. Hopefully the pace is something his JTG-Daugherty Racing team can build on. 
  • Jimmie Johnson wound up 28th after his latest part-time Cup starts. It was an issue-free run, but the former Dover ace admitted his team “had higher expectations for our performance today.” 
  • I’ll concede to Auto Racing Analytics for this one. 

Race Results

  1. Denny Hamlin
  2. Kyle Larson
  3. Martin Truex Jr.
  4. Kyle Busch
  5. Chase Elliott
  6. Noah Gragson
  7. Ryan Blaney
  8. Alex Bowman
  9. Daniel Hemric
  10. Ty Gibbs
  11. Tyler Reddick
  12. Ross Chastain
  13. AJ Allmendinger
  14. Josh Berry
  15. Austin Cindric
  16. Joey Logano
  17. Chris Buescher
  18. Daniel Suarez
  19. Chase Briscoe
  20. John Hunter Nemechek
  21. Corey LaJoie
  22. Carson Hocevar
  23. Justin Haley
  24. Zane Smith
  25. Corey Heim
  26. Harrison Burton
  27. Austin Dillon
  28. Jimmie Johnson
  29. Kaz Grala
  30. Brad Keselowski
  31. Todd Gilliland
  32. Bubba Wallace
  33. William Byron
  34. Christopher Bell
  35. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  36. Michael McDowell
  37. Ryan Preece

Stage 1

  1. Martin Truex Jr.
  2. William Byron
  3. Tyler Reddick
  4. Ryan Blaney
  5. Kyle Larson
  6. Denny Hamlin
  7. Kyle Busch
  8. Alex Bowman
  9. Chase Elliott
  10. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Stage 2

  1. Kyle Larson
  2. Alex Bowman
  3. Denny Hamlin
  4. Martin Truex Jr.
  5. Chase Elliott
  6. Kyle Busch
  7. Tyler Reddick
  8. Ryan Blaney
  9. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  10. Bubba Wallace

To see the current playoff picture, check out our weekly Playoff Points update. 

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(Top photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

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