Denny Hamlin wins fuel-mileage battle at Michigan International Speedway

Denny Hamlin took the lead with three laps remaining to win a fuel-mileage battle at Michigan International Speedway.

Hamlin moved into first on Lap 197 of 200 past William Byron, who had to pit for fuel in the closing laps and finished 21st.

“Obviously, (Byron) was doing a great job of defending,” Hamlin told Prime pit reporter Kim Coon. “But Daddy, I’m sorry, but I beat your favorite driver, folks. All of them.”

Hamlin’s fiance, Jordan Fish, is expecting the couple’s third child (a boy) this week.

Chris Buescher finished second, followed by Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson.

Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, Kyle Busch, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10.

Hamlin earned his third victory of the season and the 57th of his career. For his third victory at Michigan and first at the 2-mile oval since 2011, Hamlin had to slice through a lot of traffic after resarting outside the top 10 with 47 laps remaining. The race stayed green the rest of the way.

“It’s fantastic,” Hamlin said. “Chris Gayle, this whole team has just done a great job. We’ve been so fast throughout the entire year, just haven’t finished it for one reason or another. Feels good to come here at Michigan where we’ve been so close over the years. This is such a gratifying day to restart 11th or something like that and drive through the field. I knew I was going to have to go 100 percent to get around everybody. Just worked them one by one.”

For the third consecutive race, Carson Hocevar had a good chance to break through for his first Cup Series victory, but the Spire Motorsports driver suffered a cut left-rear tire while leaving with 19 laps remaining. The Portage, Michigan, native was forced to pit under green and fell a lap down in 30th after leading 22 laps.

Hocevar tied a career-best finish at Nashville Superspeedway last week and was in contention for the Coca-Cola 600 before an engine failure in his No. 77 Chevrolet.

The race was stopped ror more than 11 minutes by a red flag for cleanup of a five-car crash in Turn 2 on Lap 67. Alex Bowman took the worst of it, getting turned into a head-on collision with the outside wall by contact from Cole Custer (who had been hit by Austin Cindric).

Bowman walked away from his mangled No. 48 Chevrolet, but his freefall in the points standings continued with his seventh finish of 27th or worse in the past nine races.

“That hurt a lot,” Bowman told Coon. “That was probably top of the board on hits I’ve taken, and unfortunately I’ve had a lot of hits. So I hate that for the 48 team. Couldn’t really do anything except think about ‘Oh (expletive) this is about to hurt really bad.’

“Hate that for our team. It’s been a rough two months. I mean, honesty, we were pretty decent (in practice), I was pretty optimistic to start today. We got super loose and just had a long pit stop trying to make an adjustment to make it better. And never really got a chance to race again after that. I’m confident that my guys would have gotten the car better, and we could have gotten back up through there, but unfortunately, when you get in the back like that, (expletive) gets pretty crazy, and stuff like that happens.”

WILL BE UPDATED

Stage 1 winner: Buescher

Stage 2 winner: Byron

Next up: Sunday, June 15, 3 p.m. ET at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course in Mexico City on Prime.