Denny Hamlin wins fuel-mileage battle at Michigan International Speedway
Denny Hamlin took the lead with three laps remaining to win a fuel-mileage battle at Michigan International Speedway.
Hamlin moved into first on Lap 197 of 200 past William Byron, who had to pit for fuel in the closing laps and finished 21st.
Chris Buesher finished second, followed by Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson.
Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, Kyle Busch, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10.
For the third consecutive race, Carson Hocevar had a good chance to break through for his first Cup Series victory, but the Spire Motorsports driver suffered a cut left-rear tire while leaving with 19 laps remaining. The Portage, Michigan, native was forced to pit under green and fell a lap down in 30th after leading 22 laps.
Hocevar tied a career-best finish at Nashville Superspeedway last week and was in contention for the Coca-Cola 600 before an engine failure in his No. 77 Chevrolet.
The race was stopped ror more than 11 minutes by a red flag for cleanup of a five-car crash in Turn 2 on Lap 67. Alex Bowman took the worst of it, getting turned into a head-on collision with the outside wall by contact from Cole Custer (who had been hit by Austin Cindric).
Bowman walked away from his mangled No. 48 Chevrolet, but his freefall in the points standings continued with his seventh finish of 27th or worse in the past nine races.
'That hurt a lot,' Bowman told Prime pit reporter Kim Coon. 'That was probably top of the board on hits I've taken, and unfortunately I've had a lot of hits. So I hate that for the 48 team. Couldn't really do anything except think about 'Oh (expletive) this is about to hurt really bad.'
'Hate that for our team. It's been a rough two months. I mean, honesty, we were pretty decent (in practice), I was pretty optimistic to start today. We got super loose and just had a long pit stop trying to make an adjustment to make it better. And never really got a chance to race again after that. I'm confident that my guys would have gotten the car better, and we could have gotten back up through there, but unfortunately, when you get in the back like that, (expletive) gets pretty crazy, and stuff like that happens.'
WILL BE UPDATED
Stage 1 winner: Buescher
Stage 2 winner: Byron
Next up: Sunday, June 15, 3 p.m. ET at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course in Mexico City on Prime.
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