Denny Hamlin worked his way by William Byron with four laps to go and had enough gas to hang on and win Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich.
The Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota No. 11 caught Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet with four circuits left on the two-mile track, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver ran out of gas coming to the white flag, landing in 28th place.
Hamlin beat Chris Buescher by 1.09 seconds for his third Cup Series win this season and third at MIS. His last victory there came in June 2011.
JGR teammates Ty Gibbs and Bubba Wallace were third and fourth. Kyle Larson finished fifth.
Byron grabbed the lead away from polesitter Chase Briscoe on Lap 12 of Stage 1, but Buescher passed Byron on Lap 36 of the 45-lap segment and earned his first stage win of 2025.
Byron finished second while Hamlin, Briscoe and Josh Berry completed the top five in the incident-free stage.
The first caution for cause waved on Lap 60 when Noah Gragson and John Hunter Nemechek, running just inside the top 20, spun on the backstretch to bunch up the field again, but seven laps later a hard wreck occurred in Turn 2.
Riding in the bottom lane, last week’s winner Ryan Blaney tapped Cole Custer’s No. 41, triggering a mess that ended up with Alex Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet crashing violently nose-first into the wall and Briscoe spinning after being clipped by Custer’s Ford. That prompted a red-flag condition for cleanup.
As Stage 2 neared its end, Blaney slapped the wall on his own in the No. 12 Ford and spun down the speedway, an unfortunate fifth caution for Christopher Bell, who pitted shortly before Blaney’s mishap.
The closing laps of the stage featured a spirited battle between Byron, Reddick, Austin Cindric and Carson Hocevar. Byron made the winning pass on the final lap for the stage win while Cindric was able to hold off Michigan native Hocevar for second.
Hocevar took the point on Lap 152, but the Spire Motorsports driver suffered a flat left rear tire with 19 circuits left, turning over the lead to Byron. Hocevar finished 29th.
