Coca-Cola 600 results: Denny Hamlin survives two overtime restarts to win wild

CONCORD, North Carolina — Of the 37 cars that started the 63rd running of the Coca-Cola 600, the vast majority of them ended up either torn up, chewed up, spun out or turned over — which included Denny Hamlin. And in spite of all that, it was Hamlin who took home arguably the most difficult edition of NASCAR’s longest race ever seen.

After taking four fresh tires on his final pit stop heading into overtime, Denny Hamlin emerged from a four-wide battle for the lead on the first restart, then held off a charge from Kyle Busch in double overtime to win the Coca-Cola 600 for the first time in his career. With his win, Hamlin became the 12th driver in NASCAR history to win all three of the sport’s majors — the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Southern 500 — and he did so in what was the longest race in NASCAR history at 413 laps and 619.5 miles.

Coca-Cola 600 unofficial results

1. #11 – Denny Hamlin
2. #18 – Kyle Busch
3. #4 – Kevin Harvick
4. #14 – Chase Briscoe
5. #20 – Christopher Bell
6. #8 – Tyler Reddick
7. #47 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
8. #34 – Michael McDowell
9. #5 – Kyle Larson
10. #48 – Alex Bowman

The finish

Towards the end of 600 miles, the finish was shaping up to be a race between Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe, as Briscoe ran down Larson and made several attempts to pass Larson on the inside line. With two laps to go, Briscoe attempted to put a slidejob on Larson in Turn 1, but the move didn’t stick and Briscoe ended up spinning out to bring out the yellow flag.

The ensuing caution resulted in two split strategies: Larson, Ross Chastain, Joey Logano, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. all took two tires, while everyone else from Denny Hamlin on back put on four. The result was enormous an entire swarm of cars charging to the front at the restart. And coming off Turn 4 coming to the white flag, Larson, Chastain, Hamlin, and Austin Dillon were all four-wide for the race lead before Larson hooked Dillon into the outside wall, triggering a multi-car crash that set up double overtime.

After coming out on the other side of the four-wide scrum, Hamlin was able to fend off Kyle Busch on the final restart to take the win.

600 miles of mayhem

After offseason testing at Charlotte saw drivers right on the edge of control in the Next Gen car, there was an expectation that this year’s Coca-Cola 600 may feature a higher level of both on-track action and attrition as a consequence. Those expectations ended up being realized in a race as difficult on drivers and equipment as it was exciting for the sellout crowd that came to witness it.

The yellow flag flew 18 times, with several major incidents mixed in-between self-spins and other issues. Drivers like Kyle Busch, Bubba Wallace, Chase Elliott and Larson all spun out of spots at the front of the field. A dozen cars — including the eventual winner Hamlin — ended up piled up in Turn 2 on a restart.

But the most dramatic crash came with just over 50 laps to go, when Daniel Suarez spun sideways in front of traffic and collected the oncoming cars of Todd Gilliland and Chris Buescher. As Buescher’s car spun through the infield turf, it ended up getting launched into the air and rolled over five times before coming to rest on the…