DOVER, Del. – Kyle Larson tried everything and every line to get around Denny Hamlin in the closing laps of Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway. Ultimately, he came up 0.25 seconds short of Hamlin in a runner-up finish.
"I knew when I got within three car lengths, he was going to start moving around," Larson said of Hamlin. "I was trying all sorts of different angles and speeds. Nothing could generate enough speed to get close enough to do anything. That was a bummer."
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Larson started the race from the 21st position in the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The 31-year-old driver wasted no time moving up through the field – entering the top 10 on lap 53 and the top five on lap 107. He finished stage one in fifth. Larson restarted stage two from sixth and worked his way to third by the middle of the segment. Crew chief Cliff Daniels was one of the first among the top five to bring his driver down pit road and the play worked as Larson was able to get ahead of then-leader Martin Truex Jr. on the green-flag cycle of stops. As the cycle played out, Larson passed (the yet-to-pit) Corey LaJoie for the lead on lap 219. From there, Larson secured his series-leading sixth stage win of the season (no other driver has more than two).
Larson restarted the final stage in second after narrowly losing the lead off of pit road to Hamlin. By the middle of the run, he was chipping away at his competitor's lead and making significant inroads over the long run. Pitting under green on lap 318, Larson beat Hamlin off of pit road and cycled to the lead for the lap 329 restart. He lost the lead off that restart but continued to bring the fight in second. The closing laps saw a cat-and-mouse game between the two, with Larson trying different lines and Hamlin looking for lines to stunt the No. 5 momentum.
Larson's second-place result was his series-best fifth top-five of the season and second runner-up of the year. His 39 laps led on the day added to his 570 circuits out front in 2024—the top mark of all Cup Series drivers. This is Larson's second top-two finish in four starts at Dover with Hendrick Motorsports.
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"A great day for our HendrickCars.com Chevy team," Larson said. Started 21st, drove up to fifth in the first stage. Got a stage win. Another stage win sounds good. Good points day. We would have loved to get a win.
"I'm always fast here at Dover. I just needed to be a little bit better on the restarts. I've lost a lot of races on restarts here. I'll keep trying to get better."
Chase Elliott drove up from 29th to fifth for his fourth top-five result of the season. The No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts team liked the long-run speed the car had for the 400-mile race and it showed. Elliott entered the top 10 on lap 70 and scored stage points in the opening 120-lap segment with a ninth-place run. He radioed to crew chief Alan Gustafson that he was tight to start but didn't want to lose security in the back of the car. In stage two, Elliott ran in the top 10 the entire time. The team had a scare early when the No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 hit the wall but the team let Elliott know that the car looked fine. Late in the stage, the 28-year-old driver moved from seventh to fifth with passes of Tyler Reddick and Kyle Busch, where he finished the stage.
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Before the final stage, Elliott told the team that the car felt good. He lined up sixth and maintained a top-seven position. Scored in seventh after the lap 322 caution and having just pitted, Gustafson kept his driver out on track and that set Elliott up to restart fourth with 72 laps to go. From there, he ran between fourth and sixth the rest of the way—passing Noah Gragson with six laps to go for his final position of fifth.
"I was really happy with our car," Elliott said. "A couple of moves here or there. I needed to just get myself a little further forward. I'm really happy with the NAPA Chevy. We had a solid day and it was fun. It's always fun when you can pass your way to the front."
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Making his 300th Cup Series start, Alex Bowman took the grid from the ninth position in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. He told crew chief Blake Harris early on that he needed more lateral load in the turns. With improved balance, Bowman finished eighth in the stage. The second stage saw Bowman restart from that spot and go to work in the outside lane with passes of Busch and Hamlin to get to sixth. After pitting from fourth on lap 184, he was the fourth car on fresh tires and again went to work. Bowman passed Reddick for third on lap 214 and then got by Truex Jr. eight laps later for second. In the closing laps of the stage, the 31-year-old driver got closer to Larson, the leader, but couldn't get around his teammate for the lead and finished the stage in second.
Under the stage break, the No. 48 came down pit road for service and came out of his pit stall three-wide with Hamlin and Larson for the lead off of pit road. With other cars around them, Bowman backed off a bit to get behind the two but did take on a little contact. He restarted third and fell back to fifth at lap 300. The balance on the car had started to fade a bit on this run. Following a green-flag stop and a caution during the cycle, Bowman was sixth on lap 322. With only eight cars on the lead lap (and plenty needing to take the wave around), Harris decided to do something different and brought his driver to pit road for fresh tires, fuel and an air pressure adjustment. Bowman restarted eighth with 72 laps to go and again restarted eighth with 62 laps to go. He could not gain any ground over the final run and finished eighth for his sixth top-10 finish of the year. It was also Bowman's fourth straight top-10 at Dover.
"We were really fast in the middle segment of the race," Bowman said. "We were probably just a little too tight on the top. I couldn't rotate the bottom like I wanted to, but I was too free on entry to free the car up. I could make a lot of pace up top, but it just hurt the tires pretty bad.
"It was still a good points day and a step in the right direction. It's a little more consistency than we've seen, so hopefully we can keep plugging away at it."
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William Byron started third in the No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. He maintained a top-four spot in the opening stage before taking the lead on lap 79 from Ryan Blaney. Byron led the next 36 laps before losing the lead with six laps left in the stage to Martin Truex Jr. to finish second. Restarting second in the next stage, the 26-year-old driver reported he was a "little too tight center of (turns) three and four." Pitting under green from the top five on lap 183, the car fell off the jack before the stop was complete, costing the team significant time on pit road. Byron finished the stage in 17th.
In the final stage, he radioed that his car was too tight in traffic and the three-time winner in 2024 worked different lanes to see if that would make a difference. On the lap 330 restart, Byron was caught up with nowhere to go in a multi-car incident with Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell and Zane Smith that ended his day. Byron finished 33rd in the event, ending his streak of five straight top-10 finishes.
"We were rolling on the bottom and something happened up top," Byron said. "The No. 23 (Bubba Wallace) got spun across the track and we were there. We had a good No. 24 Liberty University Chevy early but couldn't get through traffic very well out front. Once we got in the back, we were terrible in traffic. We didn't have the balance today."
Sunday's Dover race marked the 25th straight time a Hendrick Motorsports driver finished in the top 10 at the "Monster Mile." Leaving Dover, Larson holds the points lead by 15 markers over Truex Jr. Elliott is third (33 markers behind Larson), Byron is sixth, and Bowman is ninth.
Next up for the quartet at Hendrick Motorsports is Kansas Speedway. The 12th race of the Cup Series season will occur on Sunday, May 5, at 3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).