Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin took the lead in 2025's NASCAR Cup Series wins category with a victory in Sunday afternoon's Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Dover Motor Speedway. The win was his second in a row at Dover, as he also won there last year when the race was contested in late April as opposed to July.
Entering Sunday's race around the four-turn, 1.0-mile (1.609-kilometer) high-banked Monster Mile oval in Dover, Delaware, just four drivers had won more than one race through the season's first 20 races, and all four of them, Hamlin included, had won three times. Now the driver of the No. 11 Toyota is the first to four wins.
The win also allowed Hamlin to move to the lead in playoff points with 24 (four wins and four stage wins), and he also moved back up to fourth place in the point standings, which would be worth an extra seven playoff points should he remain there by the time the regular season concludes at Daytona International Speedway next month.
Make no mistake about it; this win was big for Hamlin, who remains NASCAR's all-time winningest driver to never win a championship. And yes, that would still be the case without the much-maligned modern playoff format.
But there were a number of other drivers who were beyond thrilled to see Hamlin in victory lane with another Miles the Monster trophy heading home with him.
Several drivers (not named Denny Hamlin) win big at Dover
Eight drivers have won one race this year, meaning that there have been 12 winners in total. There can still technically be more winners than playoff spots, as there are five races remaining on the regular season schedule. But the odds of that happening are extremely long at this point.
In the event that there are more winners than playoff spots, the single-race winners are those who would be at risk of missing the playoffs. Yes, the format is widely considered a "win and in" format, but there are no spots added in the event that there are more than 16 winners.
In that case, the tiebreaker to determine which single-race winners get in and which don't becomes points. Right now, two single-race winners are well below the other six when it comes to points.
Talladega Superspeedway winner Austin Cindric of Team Penske is 19th, and Las Vegas Motor Speedway winner Josh Berry of Wood Brothers Racing is 22nd. The other six are all inside the top 11 and no longer at risk of missing the postseason.
Those drivers are Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and William Byron, Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano, Joe Gibbs Racing's Chase Briscoe, and Trackhouse Racing's Ross Chastain.
What Hamlin's win did was cross off one more opportunity for another new winner to emerge, further solidifying the belief that Cindric and Berry are also safe, even if they haven't yet mathematically locked up a playoff spot.
Yes, there are still seven winners from last year who have not yet won this year. But five new winners over the next five weekends is a near-impossibility, even with a road course race at Watkins Glen International and a superspeedway race at Daytona left on the regular season calendar.
For that very reason, Hamlin's win was also welcome news for the drivers battling to get into the postseason on points. The four winless drivers currently in provisional playoff spots are 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick, Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman, RFK Racing's Chris Buescher, and 23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace.
Wallace is in the undesirable position of being "safe", unless another new winner emerges. Nobody wants to enter Daytona as the last driver in, because no matter how many points they score, they can drop out if a surprise winner emerges.
We saw it happen last year, when Harrison Burton, last place among full-time drivers in points, stole a playoff spot with an upset Daytona win.
Wallace sits 16 points ahead of RFK Racing's Ryan Preece for that final spot, but he is crucially 28 points behind Buescher, who currently has that slight advantage of not being the next driver out in the event of a surprise winner.
Bowman is another 19 points ahead of Buescher, while Reddick is a whopping 93 points ahead of Bowman, meaning that he is probably safe. As for the other drivers below the cut line, Richard Childress Racing's Kyle Busch is 39 points Wallace, and Joe Gibbs Racing's Ty Gibbs is 13 points behind Busch.
Aside from the aforementioned races at Watkins Glen and Daytona, additional remaining regular season races are scheduled to take place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway, and Richmond Raceway.
The regular season's 22nd race is scheduled to take place this Sunday, July 27 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Brickyard 400 is set to be shown live on TNT Sports from the "Racing Capital of the World" starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.