Enjoy Illinois 300: Denny Hamlin earns Toyota’s 200th Cup Series win at Gateway

MADISON, Ill. — Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin earned his 59th career win in the NASCAR Cup Series after taking the checkered flag in the Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway and achieved Toyota’s 200th victory at the premier level.

Hamlin’s victory set many milestones for the 44-year-old Virginia driver, as career win No. 59 put him one spot away from being tied for 10th all-time with Kevin Harvick (60 wins). The driver of the No. 11 Progressive Toyota also earned his 56th Cup Series victory as a Toyota driver, which places him in a tie for first with Kyle Busch for the most in Toyota’s Cup Series history.

“Yeah, it’s so big for everyone at Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing,” Hamlin said. “Progressive Toyota was great there at the end. So happy to get this victory. My dad’s not feeling well at home. Just shout out to him. The whole family’s here. Fantastic day. Man, couldn’t be better.

“Man, it’s just a great victory. Love that Denny time flag [in crowd], poster is pretty good. Y’all can boo me. You can either get on the bandwagon or you can get run over by it.”

Hamlin’s teammate, Chase Briscoe, continues to deliver top performances in his first year with JGR, as the driver of the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota earned his second straight top-two finish and his 12th top five of the 2025 season.

“That just shows how fast our Bass Pro Shops Toyota was,” Briscoe said. “I felt like if we never had to go to the back two or three different times — if I could have just maintained control of the race, I definitely felt like we had the car to beat. Wish it would have been us. It would have been cool to win the 200th race for Toyota, but it is crazy what a year can make, to be disappointed with second place says a lot. Congrats to Denny (Hamlin), Coach (Joe Gibbs, owner and founder, Joe Gibbs Racing) and congrats to Toyota as well on 200.”

Chase Elliott ended up third, earning Hendrick Motorsports its best finish at Gateway since it debuted on the Cup Series schedule in 2022.

“It felt good to just have a solid day for this No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet team,” Elliott said. “I thought we were really good at times; certainly more competitive than we’ve been in a minute. It was a lot of fun to be up in the mix. We just needed a little bit more there at the end, but we were way, way better than we’ve been here lately, so that’s nice.”

Results from the 2025 Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

Toward the end of Stage 2, Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney and Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson were battling hard for fifth when the driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet hit Blaney in the left rear, causing the No. 12 Menards/Pennzoil Ford to spin out.

Blaney went on to finish in fourth, while Larson finished 12th. Both drivers agreed the incident was not intentional.

“I got turned around,” Blaney said. “He made a mistake, but I paid the penalty for it. I am happy we were able to rebound and come away with a pretty good finish. Next week we just want to go run another race and run where we should run. We will approach it like a normal weekend and see where we end up after Bristol.”

23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace led 73 laps, helping him earn a new career-high in a season for laps led (343 laps). Wallace finished eighth after earning the Stage 2 victory and scoring 44 points.

Joey Logano earned his fourth straight top-five finish at World Wide Technology Raceway, as he continues to be the only driver in the NASCAR Cup Series to finish inside the top five in every Cup race held at the 1.25-mile track. Logano finished first in 2022, third in 2023, and fifth in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

“The strategy gave us a shot to win,” Logano said. “We were up there racing against the 11. I thought maybe on that green flag cycle we could get him, but he short-pitted us a lap and we just weren’t able to get ahead of him. That would have been the control of the race. We gave up control on the restart and we just couldn’t regain it. Overall, we needed to score points with the Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang here and we did that. We got some stage points in the second stage and a top-five finish. It is a pretty cool top five string we have going here at Gateway [WWTR] but wish it was a win.”

Legacy Motor Club’s John Hunter Nemechek earned another top-10 finish in his 2025 Cup Series campaign. It was his eighth of the season as he finished sixth. Coming into the year, Nemechek had just seven in his Cup career.

Now, the driver of the No. 42 Pye Barker Fire & Safety Toyota has 15 top 10s. Nemechek also earned all eight in 2025 by getting them on back-to-back weekends (Daytona/EchoPark, Texas/Kansas, Mexico City/Pocono, Darlington/Gateway).

“Really solid day, executed strategy very well,” Nemechek said. “I think we knew coming into this race we knew that it would be a strategy, track position type race. I’m really proud of the effort on this No. 42 Pye Barker Toyota team, everyone at Legacy Motor Club. Sixth-place finish, another top 10 to add to the year. We ran inside the top 10 almost all day, got stage points and executed very well, so proud of the effort. Proud of the whole team, excited to continue to build on this momentum from Darlington and Gateway. We should be pretty good next week in the metric standpoint for Bristol, hopefully, group two qualifying. That was an emphasis this week. Looking forward to it.”

Joe Gibbs Racing had all four cars inside the top 10, as Denny Hamlin was first, followed by Chase Briscoe (second), Christopher Bell (seventh) and Ty Gibbs (10th).

After the race, Bell voiced his frustration with his No. 20 team on the radio about the missed opportunity for a better result at Gateway.

Here is how the playoff standings look heading into the Round of 16 cutoff race at Bristol:

GRID RANKING