NASCAR Darlington winners and losers: William Byron dominates, comes up 1 spot short

Yahoo

07-04-2025

Denny Hamlin was the fortunate driver in a late-race pit stop sequence and went back-to-back on Sunday.
Hamlin was the first off of pit road ahead of a green-white-checkered restart, then pulled away in the final two laps to win the Goodyear 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington Raceway.
Hamlin was the fortunate one in a turn of bad luck for William Byron (who led 243 of 297 laps) and Ryan Blaney (who took the lead with four laps to go and was on his way to victory before the final caution).
Hamlin won last week in Martinsville via a dominant final 200 laps, but Sunday's victory was earned in a much different manner.
Byron finished in second, with Christopher Bell in third.
Here are the winners and losers from Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington:
RACE RESULTS: NASCAR Darlington results: Denny Hamlin is winner, plus full leaderboard
Byron will feel hard done by a second-place finish on Sunday, but it was a good result overall after getting the wrong end of the final green-flag pit cycle.
Byron was The Show on Sunday, leading the first 243 laps before falling behind Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell after staying out too long on older tires.
But after the late-race caution, Byron moved up to second on the green-white-checkered finish.
Byron was not satisfied with the finish in his postrace interview with FOX, but the No. 24 team will take that exact performance again in September when the playoffs open with the Southern 500 at Darlington.
This space has been very critical of Ty Gibbs' recent slump, but Sunday's race had to be a pleasantly calm and positive day for the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team.
Gibbs struggled like most of the Toyotas during a very long run to end Stage 1, then used strategy and a timely caution to improve track position in Stage 2. While others who did the same fell out of the top 10, Gibbs continued on before finishing 9th. It's Gibbs' first top-10 finish since Sept. 2024 at Kansas.
It's going to be a long road toward making the playoffs without a victory for Gibbs, but piling up finishes like Sunday's top-10 will help.
Larson is a former Darlington winner whose race on Sunday all but ended on Lap 4, when he lost control of the No. 5 Chevrolet coming off of turn 2 and spun down the backstretch. Larson's Chevrolet bounced off of the inside retaining wall, suffering major damage to the front end.
Larson's team worked on the car enough to get him back out by the end of Stage 2, 160 laps down. But it was a surprisingly quick end for one of the pre-race favorites.
To make things worse, Larson made an unfortunate impact on the final result with a spin with four laps to go after contact with Bubba Wallace just after Tyler Reddick lost the lead to Ryan Blaney. The subsequent pit stop sequence and restart assisted Denny Hamlin in his victory.
"There's two people I love right now — my pit crew and Kyle Larson," Hamlin said on FOX postrace.
Keselowski won here last year, earned points in Stage 1 and was running in the top 10 before a Stage 2 pit cycle gone awry. Keselowski lost a right-rear wheel nut shortly after leaving pit road, and spun on the apron. NASCAR didn't throw a caution until after he had lost three laps and was back outside the top 30 in the running order. Keselowski finished 33rd, two laps down.
The No. 6 RFK Racing team needed a good day at a track in which it has had a lot of success, but that didn't happen. Keselowski remains without a top-10 finish in 2025. Teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece have a combined eight.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NASCAR Darlington winners and losers: William Byron dominates, comes up 1 spot short