MADISON, IL, (KMIZ) 

With the Gateway Arch standing tall in the backdrop, Denny Hamlin led 75 of 240 laps and punched his ticket to the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. 

Hamlin crossed the finish line 1.620 seconds ahead of teammate Chase Briscoe, earning his first victory at World Wide Technology Raceway in front of a sellout crowd. The win marked the 59th of his career, leaving him just one shy of breaking into the top 10 on NASCAR’s all-time wins list.

Bill Murray served as the grand marshal of the race and was seen leaning inside Hamlin’s number 11 car on pit road, talking to the driver. 

“I just told him to talk to the guys behind me and make sure they stay behind me the rest of the race,” Hamlin joked when asked about the exchange. “We made that happen.” 

The 1.25-mile track has never been an easy track for drivers. Since the Cup Series began racing there in 2022, its unique layout — two differently shaped corners, long straightaways, and one of the narrowest pit roads on the circuit has tested the best drivers in the sport. 

“It’s extremely narrow,” Kyle Larson said when asked about pit road. “It’s just tight and dangerous.  Dangerous for the pit crew members. The speeds are faster, but you’re trying to be a bit more cautious,  more aware of things as you’re pulling in and out of your stall. It’s a tricky one for sure.”

“The passing is the difficult part here at this track,” Hamlin added.  The straightaways are long, and the corners are pretty narrow.” 

It certainly helps when you can start on the pole, which is exactly what Hamlin and his 11 team did after finishing runner-up during last year’s race.

Hamlin left St. Louis last June with a stray puppy that his family had found at the Gateway Arch by the river. The dog was later named LuLu; however, Hamlin had stated on his podcast Actions Detrimental that he believed LuLu was cursed after having an average finish of 25th over his next five races. That bad luck seems to have worn off a year later.

After leading the field to green, Hamlin surrendered the lead by lap six and slid back to third by lap 45, as teammate Chase Briscoe captured Stage One and its valuable playoff point. By lap 140, Hamlin had slipped to seventh, while Bubba Wallace — driving the No. 23 car co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan at 23XI Racing — grabbed the Stage Two win.

Hamlin managed to claw his way back to first on lap 156 and held onto the lead for 40 laps before coming to pit road. After a well-executed stop from his crew and a caution flag on lap 210, Hamlin found himself back on the front row next to Brad Keselowski, who was on much older tires. The 44-year-old veteran wasted no time blowing past Keselowski on the restart and never looked back, leading the final 25 laps. 

The victory marked Toyota’s 200th victory in the Cup Series, after entering the sport in 2007. 

“I was proud of all of our cars today,” Joe Gibbs, three-time Super Bowl champion and owner of Joe Gibbs Racing, said. “They were fast and up front, and that says a lot of everybody back home that does all that work. Tomorrow we’ll hang a banner and thank all of them, and it’s just become a real tradition for us.” 

While Hamlin had a clean day, the same cannot be said for some of his fellow playoff drivers. 

Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 was the second race of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. Sixteen drivers entered St. Louis with championship hopes, but by the end of the day, four were in danger of elimination.

The playoff format features three rounds leading up to the winner-take-all championship race. Each round consists of three races, and after the final race of each round, the four lowest-ranked drivers are eliminated from contention.

Josh Berry entered the day below the cutline after wrecking on the first lap a week prior. 

“It’s definitely more intense, but I mean, you can only go out and do the best you can each and every week, right? Like you don’t prepare more, drive harder or try harder, because of the playoffs,” Berry told ABC 17.  “We’re trying to go out every week and do the best we can, and it just takes a group effort from everybody to execute at a high level to make it to these playoffs.” 

But much like his race at Darlington a week earlier, Berry’s day ended prematurely after spinning in turn two after contact with Chase Elliot. The impact destroyed Berry’s left-front tire, resulting in a last-place finish. 

Shane van Gisbergen also came into Gateway sitting below the playoff cutline, despite collecting four wins this season. Sunday marked his first Cup Series start at the track. Earlier in the week, he joked that he “couldn’t point to St. Louis on a map”.

“The track is pretty cool and the people seem pretty nice, but I went and drove through the city before, and yeah not great,” Van Gisbergen joked when asked about his first impressions of St. Louis

The New Zealander, known for his road course prowess, noted that while World Wide Technology Raceway shares some traits with a road course, that wouldn’t make up for his lack of experience. 

“It’s still a lot of flow and flow-based corners rather than stop and go, so there is a lot of break pressure at one, and you go down two gears. But the way the cars are set up and how they’re set up for just lefts, I don’t think it’s a real advantage,” Van Gisbergen said. 

Van Gisbergen would be proven correct, finishing 25th after spinning on lap 157 in turn four, and damaging the front of his car. 

By the end of the race, Berry, Van Gisbergen, Alex Bowman, and Austin Dillon found themselves on the brink of elimination heading into Bristol. 

Bowman fell victim to pit road woes, finishing 26th, while Dillon spun out his brother Ty to bring out the fifth of ten cautions on the day, coming home 18th.

“I think that there probably will be a couple of guys below the cut that are just praying that something bad happens to the guys in front of them,” Hamlin said before the race.  That’s really the only shot.” 

After winning the inaugural race, Joey Logano earned a fifth-place finish, which was enough to put him 22 points above the cutline. However, the three-time champion said he still isn’t comfortable. 

“I don’t think anyone in the playoffs would say it’s comfortable,” Logono said. “I remember Jimmie Johnson said it’s ten weeks of hell. He’s about right.” 

Logano’s teammate, Ryan Blaney, finished one spot ahead of him in fourth place. A year after running out of gas on the final lap, it looked like Blaney would be a contender once again until he got turned by Kyle Larson on lap 136, forcing him to have to pick his way back through the field. Larson and his 5 car went barreling into turns three and four before slipping up the track and making accidental contact with the 12 car. 

“He had fifty feet underneath him on the racetrack. I was as high as I could go,” Blaney said on his incident with Larson. “Proud of our comeback after getting spun around and then coming back and running fourth, that’s really good resilience.” 

Larson also looked like a contender early in the race, finishing inside the top five of the first two stages, but finished the day in 12th. 

“I think it’s a great region for racing, and the atmosphere and crowds are always great here,” Larson said when asked about World Wide Technology Raceway being added to the playoff schedule.  “I would have liked it to have been a track that we’ve had some better stats at, but either way, the Midwest fans are great, and they deserve a playoff race.”