NASCAR celebrates Throwback Weekend every year with the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, one of the most historic tracks in the sport.
Nicknamed “The Lady in Black” or the track “Too Tough to Tame”, William Byron led 243 laps on the day, but he didn’t lead any of the final 50 as Denny Hamlin got his second straight win on Sunday.
Early on, Kyle Larson spun on Lap 4 and hit the interior wall hard. He went to the garage, where he stayed for 160 laps before getting his Hendrick Cars Camaro back out on the track. Things stayed calm for the next 20 laps until Carson Hocevar went into the wall for the second caution of the day.
On Lap 82, Hocevar was once again involved as he crashed with Riley Herbst to bring out the third caution of the race. Byron and his pit crew continued their strong start by keeping him in the lead down the stretch as he took Stage 1 in Darlington.
Stage two started clean, as they ran 40 laps without incident until Brad Keselowski lost a lugnut, which threw a caution for debris. Byron managed to once again be the first driver off of pit road and held onto the lead. Byron battled with Joey Logano towards the end of stage two, but the 24 held onto his lead and won the second stage as well.
However, after a dominant start, the long run of green flag racing proved to be costly for the 24 team as Byron had to pit under green and gave up the lead to Denny Halin. As it stayed green, Hamlin was forced to pit as well before Tyler Reddick took the lead with 45 laps to go. It looked for a while like Reddick would cost to a fairly easy win, but Ryan Blaney had a great run down the home stretch of the race and made it really tight with ten laps to go. Blaney shaved a full second off the distance between him and Reddick in a four-lap period as the Penske Motorsports Mustang honoring his father Dave caught Reddick with four laps to go, but a caution involving a lapped Kyle Larson sent this race into overtime. Denny Hamlin won the race off pit road and had a great restart to capture the Goodyear 400, his second straight win.