Sunday’s wild NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway felt more like a superspeedway event with all of the chaos and carnage. Only 24 drivers reached the checkered flag, and eleven cautions eclipsed a record that had stood for 20 years.
Denny Hamlin won the day, driving away from the field during the final run of the race. The victory was his 63rd in Cup, tying him with Kyle Busch for ninth on the all-time wins list.
But that’s only scratching the surface of what went down at MIS, so let’s take a look at the biggest winners and losers from the NASCAR Cup race in the Irish Hills of Michigan:
WINNER: Denny Hamlin is at his best, and honors both Rowdy Busch and Gentleman Ned
Watch: ‘We’re still thinking of Kyle’: Hamlin honors Busch in Victory Lane
We are witnessing the best version of Denny Hamlin, and at 45 years old, he’s only getting faster. He’s now tied Kyle Busch with 63 career wins, and honored the fallen NASCAR legend with a custom-made flag combining the JGR trademark #11 and the RCR trademark #8 to make a Kyle Busch #18 on a black background. He also remembered legendary driver Ned Jarrett, who died this past weekend and was the original ‘badass’ driver of the No. 11 in NASCAR. Also, Hamlin managed to win from the back of the field for the second consecutive week, and it feels like nothing can stop him at this point. NASCAR now heads to Pocono, where Hamlin has been dominant since he was a Cup Series rookie two decades ago.
LOSER: Tyler Reddick shows a crack in the armor with first DNF
Austin Dillon, Richard Childress Racing, Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing, Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing
Photo by: Brett Farmer / Getty Images
Reddick entered Michigan with no finishes outside the top 15 this year, and despite losing a chunk of his lead at Nashville, he still held nearly 100 points between himself and his closest challenger in the championship. But the pressure is on now after getting wrecked in a mid-race restart pileup. Reddick finished 35th, recording his first DNF of the year. With Hamlin’s win, that 97-point lead is now suddenly down to 51 points. No driver besides Reddick has led the standings yet this year, but at this rate, that fact might change very soon as his boss closes in.
WINNER: Spire Motorsports with another impressive showing
Watch: Hocevar explains move leading to Lap 83 Michigan crash
What more can be said about Spire? They are far exceeding all expectations. Carson Hocevar started on the front row and scored a top five finish, while teammate Daniel Suarez finished right behind him in sixth. Both drivers moved deeper into the top ten in the championship standings, and Spire was the only team with multiple drivers finishing inside the top six, and bested every other Chevrolet driver excluding Kyle Larson. Hocevar ruffled a few more feathers of course, but his pace remains something few other ‘Bowtie’ drivers can match.
LOSER: Ford was nowhere to be found in Michigan
Joey Logano, Team Penske
Photo by: Brett Farmer / Getty Images
This was surprising. Ford has won nine of the last 12 Michigan races, but the ‘Blue Oval’ failed to even lead a single lap at Michigan International Speedway. None of them qualified inside the top ten, and their top-finishing drivers were Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney in seventh and eighth, respectively. Ford only has one victory this year, and that came in early March, so something has to change if they want another crown this year.
WINNER: Erik Jones surprises as the best of the rest
Watch: Jones laments P2: ‘It just didn’t work out perfect’
While Hamlin won Sunday’s race by over eleven seconds, there was a thrilling battle for second far behind him. But the winner of that battle to be the ‘best of the rest’ was quite the surprise — Legacy Motor Club driver Erik Jones and the No. 43 Toyota. That was no fluke either, as Jones was running down Chase Elliott for the Stage 2 win earlier in the same race. This is the Michigan native’s first top five of the 2026 season, and his best finish since winning the 2022 Southern 500 at Darlington.
LOSER: Bell & Elliott’s good day goes very wrong in vicious crash
At the start of Stage 3, Chase Elliott and Christopher Bell were battling side-by-side at the front when Elliott’s car snapped up the track. Both cars pounded the outside wall in a violent crash that forced a red flag for wall repairs. The points impact is obvious, but Bell is now nursing a possible wrist and ankle injury, according to team owner Joe Gibbs. He has been winless since last September, and driving hurt — or worse — being sidelined, could be disastrous for his Chase hopes.
WINNER: Bubba Wallace, the biggest mover in points
Bubba Wallace, 23XI Racing
Photo by: Brett Farmer / Getty Images
After a streak of awful finishes and bad luck, Wallace slipped all the way down to 15th in the standings. Well, even though he was involved in the same restart pileup that eliminated teammate Reddick, Wallace was able to continue, and surged to a third-place finish on Sunday. That is now his best finish of the 2026 season, and made him the biggest mover in the championship this week, jumping four positions from 15th to 11th.
LOSER: Three consecutive DNFs for Preece and Zilisch
Connor Zilisch crash damage
Photo by: Prime Video
It’s all going wrong for Ryan Preece, and it just keeps getting worse for Connor Zilisch. Preece was the perfect example of consistency with eleven consecutive top 20 finishes during the first part of the season. He was edging closer to the top ten in points, but the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford has taken a swing in the wrong direction in recent weeks. Three consecutive DNFs for incidents outside of his control have cratered Preece to 19th in the standings, and his chances of making the Chase are fading. For Zilisch, the rookie’s hopes of a Chase berth ended many weeks ago, and at this point, he just wants laps. He has only managed to complete 15% of total laps run over the past three races combined, and was eliminated in early cautions in each of those events. At Michigan, he actually wrecked twice in the first ten laps before exiting the event, recording three consecutive last-place finishes.
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