Denny Hamlin dominates NASCAR All-Star Race at Dover, wins $1M

Denny Hamlin drove like a million bucks at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday, dominating the NASCAR All-Star Race to earn his second win in the exhibition event. 

Hamlin got around his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate in Chase Briscoe for the lead with 30 laps to go, and while Briscoe stayed within striking distance for the rest of the race, he had nothing to truly challenge Hamlin with. 

Hamlin, who started segment 1 and segment 3 on the pole, pulled ahead by nearly seven seconds during the second-to-last green flag run before the caution came out for Joey Logano with 62 laps to go. Briscoe took the lead from Hamlin on the ensuing restart, but as had been the case all afternoon, Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota was better than Briscoe's No. 19 on the long run. 

"Makes it a lot easier when you got a car this fast," Hamlin told Fox Sports. "Trying to be number 1, we did it today. I just knew that the game-changer for us was long runs."

Hamlin is the second-oldest winner in All-Star Race history. He's second in the Cup Series standings through the first 12 points races of 2026 and has one win on the year at Las Vegas. 

Segments 1 and 2 were dotted with several major incidents, including crashes on Laps 3 and 73 of segment 1 that each involved nine cars, including big names such as Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell. 

Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski and Bubba Wallace were also involved in a crash in segment 2 that took them out of contention for the victory. 

Notable results

Briscoe, Erik Jones, Austin Dillon and Connor Zilisch rounded out the top five, with Austin Cindric, William Byron, Michael McDowell, Alex Bowman and Keselowski completing the top 10. 

Zilisch bounced back after a pit road penalty during yellow-flag pit stops after the Lap 75 competition caution. 

Larson and Reddick, the latter of whom ran inside the top five for much of the race, both bowed out late with power steering issues.