For the second consecutive week, the NASCAR Cup Series raced under the lights, this time at Nashville Superspeedway. Chase Briscoe started on the pole and led 53 laps in the early run, but Denny Hamlin came through down the back stretch of that 90-lap run to win the first stage of the night and give himself a playoff point.
On pit road after Stage 1, Ryan Blaney took gas and just two tires to take the lead off of pit road and jumped ahead at the restart while Hamlin started to tail off. At Lap 106, Rickey Stenhouse Jr went around after contact from Carson Hocevar put him into the wall and suffered rear tire damage. After trying to get back in the race, more damage was discovered and he ended with a DNF.
Seven laps later, Alex Bowman overrode the corner and collected Noah Gragson in the process, as both cars would end up out of the race a third of the way through.
On the restart, Christopher Bell went around and nearly wrecked Chase Elliott in the aftermath, but the #9 was able to avoid it. Elliott then fell through the field as far as 21st, but was very quiet on the radio about the issues he was facing.
At the end of stage 2, Ryan Blaney got the playoff point and would propel himself to a big run down the early stretch of Stage 3 as the #12 car had a 2.5-second lead over Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, Blaney’s teammate, with 56 laps to go.
With around 55 laps to go, green flag pit stops were underway and Blaney’s crew was excellent, getting the 12 car back on the track in under 10 seconds to regain the lead once pit stops cycled through with abou 30 laps to go. However, during those final five or so laps of stops, Blaney ran into lapped traffic, which shortened the distance between himself and the second-place car of Hocevar.
Blaney was able to space his lead to over 3 seconds as the laps ran down, and he picked up the win on Sunday night in Nashville. Carson Hocevar, Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones, and William Byron round out the top 5.
