SONOMA, Calif. — For the first time all season, there is a new leader in the clubhouse in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Placing 26th in Sunday‘s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway gave Denny Hamlin the regular-season championship lead by the slimmest of margins — one point. He tallied 11 points while Tyler Reddick, who has been in command of the series lead since winning the Daytona 500 four-and-a-half months ago, drove around with power steering issues throughout the race, finishing last in the 36-car field.
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“We don‘t really know what the issue was,” Billy Scott, crew chief of the No. 45 Toyota told NASCAR.com on pit road. “It sounds like we were able to help it some, but not fully. I think we missed an opportunity to have a solid top-10 day, had decent speed, got the fastest lap and did what we could. Certainly, disappointed to not get many points on the day.”
While sitting idly on pit road at the end of the opening stage for six excruciating laps, the No. 45 bunch went under the hood to assess the issue. Through a pair of caution flags, Reddick was able to get within four laps of the lead, three laps behind any other competitor.
“It was just a very odd issue,” Reddick told TNT Sports following the race. “Everything seemed fine when we left the pit stall that first green-flag cycle, we just had some issues with the steering and the power steering going in and out. I didn‘t know what was going on, if we had a wheel issue or what was going on. It was really hard to make any kind of lap time with it.
“It‘s so hard to say, in hindsight, if we made the right decision to work on it. I definitely don‘t think I would have been within seconds of the pace. Either way, we had a difficult road ahead.”
Hindsight also would have worked in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team’s favor Sunday. Hamlin was a contender throughout the road-course race, spending much of the opening two stages inside the top six. The plan, if he remained in contention, was to sacrifice stage points by flipping both stages in exchange for track position over the final stint, which covered roughly half the race.
But Hamlin was tagged from behind by Carson Hocevar in a restart on Lap 64 entering Turn 7. The No. 11 car looped around in the dirt, returning to the race at the rear of the field. With a damaged splitter hindering performance, Hamlin gained nine positions for the remainder of the event to clock in 26th.
“Extremely frustrated. We put a lot of time into it,” Hamlin said of the finish. “If you get wiped out in one corner, it changes the complete result.”
Chris Gayle, crew chief for the No. 11, knew the possible repercussions of not collecting stage points. If anything went haywire during the final stage, the chances of having a minuscule points day were on the table. Hamlin kept his composure, however, and made something out of nothing.
“It‘s frustrating, but what do you do about it other than the drivers have to handle that stuff themselves and the guys behind should be more cognizant and be aware,” Gayle told NASCAR.com. “I realize some of that is the guys behind seeing what‘s coming from behind, and it‘s either me spin somebody, or I get [spun], potentially. It‘s kind of chaotic with what happens here. From the crew guy side, what can you do about it?
“I‘m more proud of the fact that Denny stayed in it at the end, we picked up [nine] spots, he got by [Ty Dillon] so we weren‘t eliminated from (the In-Season Challenge). We picked up enough points after that to get the points lead. That‘s the only thing you can do and focus on.”
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Hocevar took blame for the incident, though knew he got hammered from behind. He was afraid he was going to get accused of fixing the race as he was praising Dillon throughout the week, believing he would advance to the second round of the In-Season Challenge.
“I just know I got hit,” Hocevar said. “I was going to be left, and I was looking in my mirror and they were all lining up, and I said, ‘If I don‘t get right, I‘m probably going to get spun.‘ I remember getting hit and full-rocked right.”
Yet Hamlin seized the championship lead for the first time in any regular season since a runner-up finish in June 2024 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. He has climbed from a 129-point deficit to Reddick in the last six races, which included a three-race winning streak for the first time in his career.
And when it came to road courses, a distinct advantage for Reddick, it was Hamlin who came out with the upper hand through the inaugural event at Naval Base Coronado and Sonoma, gaining 20 points on the No. 45 car in the last two races.
“They‘ve had misfortune and today we had misfortunate,” Hamlin said. “We just got to race it out. I don‘t know where the points are, but I don‘t control anything. As we see, things can happen.”
Gayle took a measured approach, recognizing the No. 11 team had its back against the wall over the past two weeks. The team responded by overcoming one of its biggest weaknesses in climbing to the top of the mountain.
“If you would have written that down going into this stretch, we would have been happy with that regardless of the finishes or what happens. It‘s kind of sour today because we thought we had a lot better car. Maybe we could have finished eighth or so last week, but this week, we felt like we could have finished in the top six, getting caught up in someone else‘s stuff and got punted from behind in that chaos.”
The No. 45 team knows that with eight races remaining in the regular season, plenty of racing is still to be completed before any driver gets a 25-point advantage leading into The Chase.
“I think the hope and plan coming into this was to gain ground,” Reddick told reporters on Saturday. “I guess it can be won or lost on any given race when all the races are in the books, and you‘re able to go back and look at it, but there‘s still a lot of racing.
“We‘re right in the mix, and it‘s very much still there for either one of us. Obviously, anyone else back there, if we hit a slump, could close the ground if they win some races. I think there‘s a couple of tracks coming up where I think Denny could have the upper hand from the experience side of things, but there‘s a lot of racing left.”
Scott quipped: “The reality is there is a reset coming in eight weeks, so this is good practice for that. We‘re going to keep focusing on what we can do, and we think that‘s going out to win more races before we get to The Chase.”
Sunday was a double-whammy for Reddick, however. Alex Bowman took the checkered flag in 10th, his first top-10 finish since rounding out the podium at Texas Motor Speedway nearly two months ago. For the second consecutive year, the No. 1 seed was bounced from the In-Season Challenge in the opening week.
Bowman played the role of this year’s UMBC or Fairleigh Dickinson, stunning the tournament’s top overall seed.
“To be honest with you, after the last two months we‘ve had, it feels good to have a solid day at the race track and finish halfway decent,” Bowman told NASCAR.com. “Obviously, it‘s been pretty horrendous the last two months. It feels good to have a good day; it‘s been a while since we‘ve had an enjoyable day at the race track.
“The bracket was what it was. I didn‘t have any idea that we were going to beat Reddick, and I caught up to him pretty early in the race and thought we might have a shot, the car was pretty good.”
With Dillon having a power steering issue of his own in the closing laps, Hamlin scooted by with 11 laps remaining, assuring the top two seeds didn‘t go down in Week 1 in consecutive years.