Denny Hamlin collected his 55th career Cup Series victory at Martinsville yesterday, tying himself with NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace for 11th in the sport’s all-time win list.

After a chaotic Truck Series race Friday night, and a controversial Xfinity Series race Saturday, Denny Hamlin put on a show to take home one of the sport’s most coveted trophies: The Martinsville Grandfather Clock.

After leading 274 of the 400 total laps, Hamlin collected his first win of the 2025 season, and his first win with Chris Gayle as his Crew Chief.

After working with Chris Gabehart for the last six seasons, he was happy to win one for Gayle. Stating post-race: “I’m really happy for (Gayle) because he’s had the tough task of having such young drivers his whole career. That is really hard to do.”

Just a couple weeks after signing a big partnership agreement with Progressive Insurance, Hamlin takes them to victory lane in just their second race on the hood of the 11 car.

Let’s dive into how he did it.

RECAP

It was an exciting 31 laps as Christopher Bell looked like he was back into race-winning form.

Bell has had some trouble the last couple weeks, but started on the pole yesterday.

However, just 25 laps into the opening stage, Chase Elliott took the lead and led some laps.

This was Elliott’s first time leading laps since the Daytona 500 in February, where he led for only 2.

Just six laps later, the first caution flag flies, with debris on the track.

This split up pit stop strategy as most of the field came in for fresh sets, and a few stayed out to move to the front.

Las Vegas winner Josh Berry leads 34 laps until the next caution flies late in stage 1.

Chris Buescher spins on the front stretch after trying to slide up in front of Carson Hocevar.

Under caution, Josh Berry experiences a mechanical problem, stalling on the track.

The Wood Brothers’ crew would replace his battery on pit road, but would lose valuable laps and time.

In a two-lap shootout to the end of stage 1, Joey Logano picks up the valuable points beats Alex Bowman to the line.

Bowman has now accumulated 49 stage points on the year.

In stage 2, Elliott regains the lead and holds a gap over Hamlin, who was running second.

More mechanical issues brings out another caution, this time in the Burt Myers car.

Myers was making his NASCAR Cup Series point race debut.

The Hamlin dominance would begin on the ensuing restart.

On lap 180, Hamlin would score his second stage win of the year.

However, the odds were against him. As up until yesterday, the Stage 2 winner has only gone on to win the race once in the last eight Martinsville events.

Early in stage 3, Hamlin clears Elliott on the restart and Bubba Wallace runs third.

They would see the green flag for 7 laps, prior to another caution as Riley Herbst sustains contact after Austin Cindric dumps him.

After green flag pit stop cycle through, Shane van Gisbergen continues to struggle in his first full-time Cup Series season.

Gisbergen spins and loses a wheel in between turns 3 and 4.

After a large string of cautions and restarts, With nine cautions, this race has set a record for the most cautions in a 400-lap event at Martinsville.

After the restart on lap 326, the race would remain under green flag conditions until the very end.

Hamlin led all of the remaining laps, putting himself into victory lane for the first time in the 2025 season.

Christopher Bell recovers from an earlier incident to finish second.

Bubba Wallace secures his second-straight 3rd place finish. Followed by Chase Elliot and Kyle Larson rounding out the top 5.

Hamlin poked fun at the fans that “don’t root for him” by holding up an ’11 against the world’ flag and showing it to the crowd right as he stepped out of the car.

FLAGS OF THE WEEK

My green flag of the week comes in the likes of Ryan Blaney. He was kind of quiet all day, and it may be entirely due to the fact he started 32nd. However, he eventually gets inside the top ten and races there most of the day. He finished in the 11th position, but after starting the back of the field, on a track that makes it near impossible to pass, pretty solid in my opinion. He’s currently one of the best at this track, and has used this track to win his way into the championship four the last 2 years.

My yellow flag is for Shane van Gisbergen. After having a bad start to the year, he currently sits 34th in the standings. It’s known and proven how great of a road course racer he is, but his oval skills can use a lot of work. Analysts pegged him to be a playoff contender due to the road courses on the schedule, assuming he would win one and lock himself in. However, after 7 races, and not a road course in sight until the month of June, how soon is it to start worrying about SVG?

My red flag is the Xfinity Series. It was an ugly showing for this series on Saturday, and not only fans, but NASCAR analysts agreed. Mike Joy called the series a “dumpster fire” on the broadcast yesterday, and everyone agreed with him as well. There was no respect in the racing and it was eminent with all the wrecks and drivers just plowing through each other. It was hard to watch, and teams need to get ahold of their drivers. I love the Xfinity Series, I think a lot of times it’s just as entertaining or even sometimes more entertaining than the Cup Series race weekends, but Martinsville’s showing set the narrative back big time.

THE NEXT RACE

The NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series celebrate throwback weekend at Darlington Raceway next weekend, a tradition that shows off the iconic faces and looks of the sport.

Current drivers will design their cars to look similar to a paint scheme ran back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and some even in the 2000-2010s.

It’s a great way to pay tribute to some of the best drivers of the sport or pay tribute to the first car these current drivers ever drove growing up.

The race will be Sunday, April 6th at 3:00 PM EST on FS1.

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