Hamlin Victorious as Truex Claims Regular Season Championship

“That’s really the biggest advantage”, Harvick said.

Hamlin was up front at the beginning of the third stage for the final 167 laps of the race after getting off pit road first and led most of the laps until his final green-flag stop. His lap was 0.102-of-a-second slower than pole victor Kevin Harvick’s lap of 27.669 at 177.730. It was Harvick’s fourth pole of the season and second at Darlington. It’s simple, but it’s cool to see Earnhardt take advantage of the fact he’s one of the few in NASCAR who has been around long enough to pull out a “retro” scheme he drove himself. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has talent, and he certainly has confidence.

“I knew nothing about the sport, but I want to know more about the sport”, said Staley, who was sporting her national champion netlace around her neck. “Charlotte went all out (with the coverage), and I wasn’t prepared for what happened in Charlotte”. It could’ve been a lot worse than it has been. Erik Jones, Kyle Larson, and Matt Kenseth were all in contention for the win throughout the night with Jones leading the most laps at 260 before finishing almost a second and a half behind Busch. “I wish we could have won, but that’s the breaks”.

Almirola, wrecking two times in the last four races, hasn’t found the form he had before fracturing his vertebrae in a wreck at Kansas in May. The throwback paint scheme is in honor of the 1972-73 Chevy Chevelle driven by Whitt’s grandfather at Cajon Speedway and also the races he ran in the NASCAR Winston Cup West Series. Hamlin brought it home, beating Kyle Busch (No. 18 M&M’s Caramel Toyota) by 2.599 seconds.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 22nd – the same as how he started – in his final time racing at Darlington.

“Sometimes it’s just not your night”, Truex said.

The Petty family is represented with a pair of fantastic looking cars – Kyle Larson’s No. 42 carries the look of Kyle Petty’s Coors Light auto from the mid-1990s, and Aric Almirola’s No. 43 is made up to look like Richard Petty’s STP vehicle from 1984, when he won his 200th race.

Why… did Denny Hamlin win?

Denny Hamlin claimed victory in one of NASCAR’s crown-jewel races, winning the Southern 500 on Sunday.

A generic look at last year’s race. “It’s always good to get a win in that series”, he said.

It looked as if Hamlin might finish high but outside of Victory Lane once Logano broke free on a restart six laps from the end. Hamlin then set about cutting into Truex’s lead, eventually pulling even with less than two laps left when Truex suffered a flat right-front tire and bounced into the outside wall.

“We were good that day, but there were a number of cars better than us”, he said.

EYE ON THE TRUCKS: Brad Keselowski finished 15th, but was asked about his truck series driver, Austin Cindric, who won the NASCAR Camping World Truck race in Bowmanville, Ontario. But he got caught in traffic on the late restarts to fall from contention.

“We took that same vehicle we ran here in the spring, and we set it aside”, Elliott, 61, said.

Kyle Busch took the restart as the race leader, with Larson alongside in second.

Austin Dillon’s vehicle for the weekend.