FireKeepers Casino 400: Denny Hamlin ties Kyle Busch with 63rd Cup win at Michigan

BROOKLYN, Mich. —  Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin came from the rear of the field due to making unapproved adjustments to his pole-winning No. 11 Toyota, and fought to the front to earn an impressive 11.110-second victory in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

Hamlin, who was also penalized one week ago at Nashville Superspeedway after starting on pole due to jumping the race start, replicated his Music City success and showed that it did not matter where he started by picking up his largest margin of victory in his Cup Series career.

For the driver of the No. 11 National Debt Relief Toyota, this was also his 63rd career NASCAR Cup Series win, tying him for ninth on the all-time wins list with his former JGR teammate, the late Kyle Busch.

Hamlin celebrated his victory with a Busch flag that had the No. 1 in JGR font and the No. 8 in Richard Childress Racing font.

“The offseason has been so tough for the whole NASCAR community, and we’ve been losing a lot of people,” Hamlin said on tying Busch in Cup wins. “It is an honor. The only way I could tie him, was to outlive him. He was just an amazing competitor. Someone that I learned so much from, and that last run, I drove as hard as I could to stink them up like Kyle (Busch) did.

“This is a really momentum-based race track. I didn’t think I was going to clear those guys on the frontstretch. It just happened when they were side drafting, it allowed me to clear. That was it for us. We were legit 30th. We were a 30th-place car at the beginning. We couldn’t do anything with it, but the moment the track came to us, and we got some track position and had some great restarts and this thing woke up right where it was yesterday.”

Michigan native Erik Jones had one of his best Cup Series performances since his victory in the 2022 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. The Legacy Motor Club driver also had to start in the rear in his No. 43 Dollar Tree Toyota, but made his way through the field to finish second in Stage 2 and ultimately finished the 200-lap race in second place.

“Yeah, it is good,” Jones said about finishing runner-up. “It is a nice day. It is disappointing in some ways. To have the car we had; it’s not we fluked into second, we were running up here all day. We had a fast Dollar Tree Camry. It just didn’t work perfectly. You need everything to go well. Restarts got chaotic at the end, and the last one didn’t work out for us, and I had to pick through traffic. By time I got up there, the race was over and Denny (Hamlin) was gone. A lot of positives to take away. The car was really fast. I couldn’t ask much more out of it for balance. We will work on it, and if we keep bringing cars like this, we will win races soon.”

23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace had a bounce-back race after a horrific stretch of four straight finishes of 20th or worse (including the All-Star Race). Wallace finished third in his No. 23 Columbia Toyota, earning his best finish of the 2026 season.

“It’s needed for all the people behind the camera here,” Wallace said about his third-place finish. “We’ve gone through a month of hell, and it’s hard to be happy with a third place because it’s what should be happening when we’re executing like we are, and we just get blindsided by something. At the end of the day its no excuses, I just need to be better, but all in all we were good enough for third.”

Results from the 2026 FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

One of the most notable incidents of the FireKeepers Casino 400 was a Lap 148 crash between Stage 2 winner Chase Elliott and Christopher Bell. Elliott got loose and got into Bell, sending Bell slamming into the outside wall in Turns 3 and 4 in one of the hardest hits NASCAR has seen this decade.

The race had to be red-flagged for over 20 minutes as Bell’s impact with the wall caused enough damage to justify repairs to the SAFER barrier. Both drivers were checked and released from the infield care center.

“It was totally my fault,” Elliott said. “I feel really bad for (Christopher) Bell, just taking him out. I was trying to run the bottom, make use of our fresh tires and at least get to second, I was hoping, and stay side-by-side with him. I just got in there and got free. I thought I was going to spin and was kind of committing to spinning out. As soon as I was committed to spinning, it just hooked up and, unfortunately, sent Christopher into the wall really hard and me shortly thereafter. We were just racing really hard. I thought it was a turning point in the race to make something happen, but just stepped over the line and paid for it.”

A multi-car wreck took place on Lap 83 when a push gone wrong on a restart from Carson Hocevar took out many contenders, including Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs. Reddick’s top-15 streak came to an end as he earned his first DNF of the year.

Hocevar, a Michigan native, and his Spire Motorsports teammate Daniel Suárez had impressive races. The driver of the No. 77 Zeigler Auto Group Chevrolet ended up fifth with 45 points and 21 laps led, while Suárez ended up sixth with 40 points and 10 laps led.

There were also Impressive runs for the drivers who finished 12th through 15th, as Cole Custer (12th), Riley Herbst (13th), John Hunter Nemechek (14th) and Josh Berry (15th) all had some of their best races of the 2026 Cup Series season.

According to NASCAR Insights, this was the first time that Ford did not lead a single lap in a Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway since June 1983, which was 81 Michigan races ago.

GRID RANKING

The 2026 GRID Ranking is the 10th year of the world’s premier motorsports ranking system, which was initially released on Sunday, April 5.

The official ranking includes drivers participating in seven racing series (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, WRC, Supercars, MotoGP). Each driver earns GRID Ratings, which help determine their seeding in the GRID Ranking.

DRIVER	OLD RATING	PREVIOUS RANKING	MOST RECENT FINISH	NEW RATING	NEW RANKING
Tyler Reddick	19.35	3rd	35th	18.06	2nd
Denny Hamlin	13.32	10th	1st	14.90	6th
Chase Elliott	11.42	16th	32nd	10.66	18th
Ty Gibbs	10.99	19th	25th	10.26	19th
Christopher Bell	9.20	27th	31st	8.58	29th

Week 10 of the GRID Ranking:

Week 10 of the NASCAR GRID Rating saw the gap shrink between Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin. With some poor finishes from Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs and Christopher Bell, their scores dropped compared to last week.

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Great American Getaway 400 presented by VISITPA at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, June 14. Coverage will begin at 3 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime Video.

 

GRID Network