NASCAR Cup Kansas: Hamlin wins after clashing with Larson

With just under 25 of 267 laps remaining in Sunday’s NASCAR contest, Hamlin worked his way around William Byron and set his sights on leader Larson.

With five laps to go, Hamlin got side-by-side with Larson for the lead but was forced to back off. On the final lap, Hamlin again got near Larson off Turn 2 and nudged Larson’s #5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in the left-rear, which knocked Larson into a hit against the wall.

Larson was able to keep going but Hamlin cleared him by 1.307 seconds to claim his first win of the 2023 season.

The win is the 49th of Hamlin’s NASCAR Cup career and ends a nearly year-long winless drought; his most recent victory coming last May in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.

After doing a celebratory burnout on the front straight following his win, Hamlin was booed by the crowd as he exited his #11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to do his victory interview.

“I’m proud of this whole team. I got position on [Larson] there and I tried to side-draft him and clipped his left-rear,” Hamlin said. “I’m glad he was able to at least finish.”

Byron, who fell two laps down at one point in the race, rallied back to finish third, ahead of Bubba Wallace in fourth as Ross Chastain completed the top five to take the overall points lead.

Joey Logano took sixth ahead of Chase Elliott and winner last time out at Dover Martin Truex Jr, with Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon rounding out the top 10.

While Hamlin was celebrating his win, Noah Gragson grabbed Ross Chastain on pitroad and began pushing him repeatedly until Chastain struck Gragson in the face. The two were quickly separated by NASCAR officials.

Christopher Bell, points leader going into the Kansas race, crashed hard at Turn 2 in Stage 2 of the race to end his running prematurely.

NASCAR Cup - Kansas race results (267 laps)

Cla	Driver	Manufacturer	Gap	Interval
1	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
2	Kyle Larson	Chevrolet	1.307	1.307
3	William Byron	Chevrolet	4.301	2.994
4	Bubba Wallace	Toyota	4.677	0.376
5	Ross Chastain	Chevrolet	5.473	0.796
6	Joey Logano	Ford	5.988	0.515
7	Chase Elliott	Chevrolet	6.426	0.438
8	Martin Truex Jr.	Toyota	7.444	1.018
9	Tyler Reddick	Toyota	8.132	0.688
10	Austin Dillon	Chevrolet	9.692	1.560
11	Kevin Harvick	Ford	11.618	1.926
12	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	Chevrolet	13.105	1.487
13	Aric Almirola	Ford	13.329	0.224
14	A.J. Allmendinger	Chevrolet	15.882	2.553
15	Daniel Suarez	Chevrolet	20.075	4.193
16	Ryan Blaney	Ford	22.442	2.367
17	Chris Buescher	Ford	22.905	0.463
18	Justin Haley	Chevrolet	27.861	4.956
19	Brad Keselowski	Ford	28.601	0.740
20	Corey Lajoie	Chevrolet	29.626	1.025
21	Erik Jones	Chevrolet	30.387	0.761
22	Ty Dillon	Chevrolet	30.615	0.228
23	J.J. Yeley	Ford	1 Lap	1 Lap
24	Todd Gilliland	Ford	1 Lap	0.802
25	Josh Berry	Chevrolet	1 Lap	5.543
26	Michael McDowell	Ford	1 Lap	4.972
27	Ryan Preece	Ford	1 Lap	11.492
28	Brennan Poole	Ford	3 Laps	2 Laps
29	Noah Gragson	Chevrolet	5 Laps	2 Laps
30	Harrison Burton	Ford	6 Laps	1 Lap
31	Austin Cindric	Ford	7 Laps	1 Lap
32	Chase Briscoe	Ford	7 Laps	6.825
33	Josh Bilicki	Chevrolet	7 Laps	10.897
34	Ty Gibbs	Toyota	91 Laps	84 Laps
35	Kyle Busch	Chevrolet	105 Laps	14 Laps
36	Christopher Bell	Toyota	110 Laps	5 Laps
View full results