FireKeepers Casino 400: Denny Hamlin saves enough fuel at Michigan, beats everyone’s favorite driver ‘again’

BROOKLYN, Mich. — Denny Hamlin saved enough fuel in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway on Sunday afternoon and beat everyone’s favorite driver again to earn his third win of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Hamlin was up toward the front of the field for most of the day and scored his 57th career Cup Series victory, making him the winningest driver in Joe Gibbs Racing history, passing Kyle Busch, who had 56 Cup Series wins with the team.

“It’s fantastic,” Hamlin said. “Chris Gayle, this whole team, has done a great job. We’ve been so fast throughout the entire year. Just haven’t finished it for one reason or another. Feels good to come here to Michigan, where we’ve been so close over the years. To get a victory for Toyota, Yahoo, Sport Clips, Shady Rays, the Jordan brand, everyone. This is such a gratifying day to restart 11th or 12th, something like that, and drive to the front.

“I was going all out pretty much the entire time. Once I got to the lead, that’s when I started saving. He kept telling me I was good. I knew I was going to have to go 100% to get around everybody. Just worked them one by one.”

Stage 1 winner Chris Buescher had a quiet day, but a much-needed one as well. After starting sixth at the track he won at in 2023, Buescher powered to the front to win the opening stage.

However, the last two-thirds of the race were much quieter for the RFK Racing driver as he picked off the leaders one by one to end up with his best finish of 2025 in second place.

Buescher’s 45 points earned were the second most of any driver at Michigan (Hamlin: 51 points), and the team will look to carry the momentum to Mexico City as Chris Buescher is one of the best road-course racers in NASCAR.

“That was such a fast Kroger/Heinz Ford Mustang,” Buescher said. “I really appreciate everybody on this team working so hard to put us in this situation and to have a chance to win. I’m disappointed I didn’t get it done, it’s on me. I had a couple different decisions I would love to go back and make and ultimately should have had us ahead of the 11. We were faster on the day and I didn’t do a good enough job. We’ll certainly take the good with it.

“We certainly need a little bit of good luck or fortune on our side. This is a day where we kind of made our own. We were really fast and worked hard to be there and just didn’t have any bad luck, so that put us with a shot to win. After the last handful of weeks with having speed in the first stage and qualifying and not being able to get the race finish that was certainly big, but it’s frustrating to be that close and to know that we had a car that was capable of winning. I just needed to do a better job.”

Hamlin’s JGR teammate, Ty Gibbs, had a hard-fought third-place finish at Michigan. Gibbs, who has the lowest average finish at Michigan of all active drivers, was fastest in practice, started inside the top 10 and almost immediately fell back into the mid-20s after complaints about a very loose race car.

Gibbs fought back and clawed his way into the top five, saving enough fuel to earn his best finish of the season, a third-place result in the Irish Hills. Although it was not the eventual first career win for the 22-year-old driver, the No. 54 team was happy with a run like this in what has been a difficult year.

“We had a very fast Monster Energy Toyota Camry,” Gibbs said. “I appreciate seeing Dave, Tom this weekend. Wish we could have got one. That was not the option with the fuel spot from where we were in. Just very unfortunate.

“I feel like we had the capability to go do it. I feel like we showed we were fast enough to go do it. I was going to go until we were going to run out of fuel. I didn’t run out of fuel yet. That was my plan. I think a win is more important than third. It’s good to have a good finish, for sure. Good to have a good day, a good comeback. We started off just very horrible. Glad we could come back and got better. Thanks for my team for sticking behind me.”

Results from the 2025 FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

Denny Hamlin’s win in his 701st career start makes him just the 10th driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to win a race after start No. 700. His third win of the 2025 season also marks the ninth time he’s had three or more wins in a Cup Series season.

William Byron and Michigan’s own Carson Hocevar were the drivers to beat during the final stage of the race. Unfortunately for them, Hocevar blew a tire in the lead and Byron ran out of gas in second place with less than five laps to go.

After leading 98 of 200 laps, Byron finished 28th and scored 29 points. Hocevar finished 29th and scored 17 points.

23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace bounced back for his second consecutive top-six finish after a stretch of three finishes of 33rd or worse. Wallace’s fourth-place finish was his best since back-to-back third-place finishes at Homestead and Martinsville earlier in the spring.

RFK Racing had all three of their cars inside the top 10, making it the first time the team has done that since the 2016 Daytona summer race, according to NASCAR Insights. Chris Buescher finished second, Ryan Preece finished ninth and Brad Keselowski finished 10th.

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