NASCAR teammates ‘battled each other’ instead of leader, squander Coke 600 win
It’s true that Daniel Suárez seized his own fate with a gutsy pit-lane decision and deserved to win the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
What’s also true?
Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell did him a favor or two.
At least, that’s what the two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates told reporters after the race Sunday — a race that was truncated by weather and left the two of them wondering “what could’ve been.”
“Those last few restarts, we could really get some speed going,” Hamlin said. “It was just a matter of who could clear between me and the 20 (Bell). And we couldn’t clear each other. And we were just buying the 7 (Suárez) extra time. Just enough time. Because every time. ... Every time I was getting next to the 7, caution came out.”
Hamlin shed a wry smile.
“It was really unfortunate,” he said. “It rained. Nothing you can do about it.”
To take you into those decisive laps:
With a little more than 50 laps to go, NASCAR called a caution. Lightning hold. That’s a 30-minute delay, right? Not Sunday, with NASCAR’s on-site meteorologist reporting that the lightning storm was far enough from the racetrack and moving away. So with the lightning hold lifted, the field filed down pit lane. Suárez was running 13th, but his crew chief Ryan Sparks opted to take two tires instead of four. That launched him to P1.
From there, two restarts would come. The first featured Hamlin and Bell bumping doors. The second featured Suárez racing his butt off, pushing Bell up the racetrack, holding off Hamlin on the inside.
After the second restart, a massive deluge arrived. And NASCAR called it from there.
Cup team owner Joe Gibbs trudged to P2 and P3 and convened an animated meeting between Hamlin and Bell.
“I knew that it was going to come down to keeping him pinned on the restart, not letting him clear me for the lead. And he cleared me,” Bell said.
From there, in the short run, it would be hard to clear with Suárez “blocking like hell.” If the rain held off, the two Toyotas had the equipment (and the tire advantage) to handle Suárez. But that’s not how it went.
“I’m bummed that the restarts played out the way that they did,” Bell said. “It just seemed like we couldn’t get going. The outside row, the 7 and the 5 (Kyle Larson) got going a lot better than me and Denny did.”
Hamlin more or less corroborated that story.
“Every time he got a run on the 7, the 7 was kind of running him up trying to defend, and that allowed me to get big runs on the 20,” Hamlin said. “Which was also bad for us.
“Instead of battling the 7, we were battling each other.”
Hamlin will still take a P3 finish, no doubt. He’s still second in points behind Tyler Reddick, who in 13 starts has five wins. Bell certainly will take the P2 finish, too. The driver for the No. 20 car is now eighth in the points standings — a refreshing day after only notching four Top 10s in the previous 12 points races.
Still, it wasn’t their day. The day belonged to Suárez, the longtime friend and mentee of Kyle Busch, the all-time great NASCAR driver who died tragically and suddenly earlier this week.
In fact, if you ask him, it hasn’t been Bell’s year.
“It’s 2026, man,” Bell said. “Nothing’s gone right for us so far.”
