Denny Hamlin continued his Xfinity Series dominance at Darlington Raceway Saturday afternoon, claiming his sixth series victory at the track. The winning move came after a restart on Lap 147 of the Sport Clips Haircuts VFW forced the race into overtime, opening the door for Hamlin to overtake Austin Hill for the lead.
“I really needed some long runs,” said Hamlin, “but I didn’t really want to show everything that we had ’til the very end of the race there. We really did a good job of maintaining everything that we had.”
Hill, frustrated after the race, said, “I just need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what I’m doing wrong on the restarts there, because that was really frustrating all day today. It didn’t matter where I was restarting, I would buzz the tires really bad and just lose track position every time I’d do it.
“So I got to do a better job of that if I’m going to win a championship. All in all, solid for us. That’s kind of something that we’ve been preaching the last six races that if you can’t be first, be second. If you can’t be second, be third. We were second today, but it still stings a little bit when you want to win.”
John Hunter Nemechek had to settle for third after sweeping the first two stages and leading a race-high 99 laps as Cole Custer and Josh Berry rounded out the top five. Riley Herbst, Justin Allgaier, Sheldon Creed, Kyle Busch and Daniel Hemric completed the top-10 finishers.
Riley Herbst currently has a one-point lead over Parker Kligerman for the final playoff spot with only one race to go in the regular season. Unfortunately for Kligerman, contact with Sam Mayer during the race cost him multiple spots resulting in a disappointing 24th place finish.
The Xfinity Series regular-season finale is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 9 at Kansas Speedway at 3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock with radio coverage provided by MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Complete Results:
