For a driver like Denny Hamlin, whose outspoken and arguably cocky attitude has earned him derision from scores of race fans, there was a moment of grace and humility that he showed at Dover when he said that he "couldn't hold Lee Petty's helmet."
With his 54th career win, Hamlin moved into a tie for 12th on NASCAR's all-time wins list with Petty, putting him in leagues with one of NASCAR's original superstars. The first generation of the famed Petty family, Lee Petty went from flipping his car in NASCAR's first race ever in 1949 to becoming the star of the sport in the 1950s, becoming the first three-time Grand National champion in NASCAR history and earning 54 wins, with his final one coming at Jacksonville on November 20, 1960 -- almost a full 20 years before Hamlin was born on Nov. 18, 1980.
Thanks to his milestone win -- his next step toward becoming one of the top 10 winningest drivers in Cup history -- Denny Hamlin has reassumed the top of the board in the CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings.
Here's a look at CBS Sports' updated NASCAR Power Rankings following Dover:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denny Hamlin | The thing about Lee Petty's mark of 54 Cup wins is that it could have been much more. Petty was still in his prime entering the 1961 season, but a near-fatal crash during his twin qualifying race for the Daytona 500 effectively ended his racing career. | ||
| 2 | Chase Elliott | Chase Elliott's fifth-place finish at Dover becomes even more notable when you consider that he had to come from 29th starting spot in order to get there. With four top fives in his last five races including a win at Texas, it's safe to say that Elliott is all the way back from his 2023 struggles. | ||
| 3 | William Byron | After getting collected in a crash not of his making, William Byron left Dover with his first DNF of the 2024 season. It was also his first DNF since last August at Michigan, and it's only his second in the last 12 months or so. | ||
| 4 | Martin Truex Jr. | In 2023, both of the Truex brothers left Dover having taken the checkered flag in their respective races. In 2024, only Ryan Truex -- who won Saturday's Xfinity race -- left the track a winner. Score one for the little brothers out there. | ||
| 5 | Tyler Reddick | Kevin Harvick saying that Tyler Reddick "yeeted" Corey Heim out of his way on pit road continues his easter egg-style use of millennial/Gen Z slang during race broadcasts. In this case, it's even funnier that Harvick's "millennial car" for the 2019 All-Star Race had the word "yeet" on the side of it. | ||
| 6 | Kyle Larson | Live by air blocking, die by air blocking: Kyle Larson may have lamented how Hamlin positioned his car to block air to his nose in the final laps, but that's exactly how Larson was able to beat Tyler Reddick for the win at Las Vegas back in March. | ||
| 7 | Noah Gragson | With a sixth-place finish at Dover and two top 10s in a row, Noah Gragson now has one top five, four top 10s and six finishes of 12th or better in 11 races so far. You're starting to see once again just how much of a talent Gragson is behind the wheel. | ||
| 8 | Alex Bowman | There's already been a bit of a fuss about spotter Kevin Hamlin calling out Alex Bowman for complaining that Kyle Larson was racing him hard for the lead, but I didn't get the sense that anything was out of the ordinary there. Sometimes, part of a spotter's job is to smack some sense into their driver when they're getting too emotional and need it. | ||
| 9 | Kyle Busch | Admittedly, it was a little funny to hear Kyle Busch express bewilderment that the crew members pushing their cars and equipment back to pit road made him get out of their way. Been there plenty of times -- always have your head on a swivel at a NASCAR track! | ||
| 10 | Joey Logano | The Ford teams are just off right now, and there's no way around it. The latest case study in the blue oval's struggles since introducing the Mustang Dark Horse was Joey Logano being a complete non-factor at Dover on his way to finishing 16th, the second-to-last car on the lead lap. | ||
| 11 | Ross Chastain | Consider the pattern broken: Ross Chastain never showed any sort of raw speed at Dover, only making his way into the top 10 late in the race before settling for 12th. | ||
| 12 | Chase Briscoe | Chase Briscoe and his team have been consistent in qualifying this year, as Dover marked the seventh time that they've qualified inside the top 10. Briscoe fell off to on race day and finished 19th, breaking a streak of three runs of 12th or better. | ||
| 13 | Ryan Blaney | If there's any Ford driver that has the feel of being able to break the manufacturer out of their funk, it's probably Ryan Blaney. He led 47 laps at Dover on his way to finishing seventh. | ||
| 14 | Brad Keselowski | It turned into a very, very long day at Dover for Brad Keselowski when he spun at the end of Stage 1. Keselowski had to labor throughout the rest of the day with suspension damage and finished many laps down in 30th. | ||
| 15 | Ty Gibbs | Ty Gibbs got back on track at Dover after a lean spell throughout April, as his 10th-place finish marked his first top-10 run since COTA. He's still looking for his first career top 10 at Kansas, where he's had two DNFs in three races so far. | ||
| 16 | Bubba Wallace | It was easy for Bubba Wallace to be frustrated with the lapped car of Zane Smith, as the natural assumption when a lead lap car gets wrecked by a lapped car is that the lapped car did something wrong. But looking at the replay, there's a case to be made that Smith got sent up into Wallace from contact with Tyler Reddick, Wallace's teammate. | ||
| 17 | Chris Buescher | Thanks to Brad Keselowski's troubles, it was up to Chris Buescher to pick up the slack for RFK Racing. He wound up giving the company a 17th-place finish as the last car on the lead lap. | ||
| 18 | Daniel Hemric | I made a mistake leaving Daniel Hemric out of the Power Rankings last week, and I've rectified that by bumping him all the way to 18th after he earned back-to-back top 10s for the first time in his Cup career at Dover. He's also led 13 laps over his last two races, bumping his career total up to 36 after he led 22 laps during his Rookie of the Year-winning campaign in 2019. | ||
| 19 | Austin Cindric | No nosebleed for Austin Cindric this week: A 15th-place finish at Dover was his second-best finish of the year and his first top 15 since he was fourth at Atlanta back in February. | ||
| 20 | Daniel Suarez | A big buena suerte to Daniel Suarez: This week, Suarez will take his U.S. citizenship exam more than a decade after he moved from Mexico to pursue his dream of racing at NASCAR's highest level. | ||
| 21 | Todd Gilliland | I tuned into Todd Gilliland's team radio after his spin and track workers' subsequent issues getting his car fished off the inside of the track, and let me tell you that crew chief Ryan Bergenty was not a happy camper. Several words were uttered beginning with F -- but at least one of them was 'fun', I suppose. | ||
| 22 | Carson Hocevar | The battle for Rookie of the Year honors is heating up: Carson Hocevar still holds the advantage, but a 14th-place finish allowed Josh Berry to cut the gap to 13 points between the top two rookies in Cup. | ||
| 23 | Josh Berry | Of Josh Berry's three top-15 finishes to start the year, two of them have come on concrete tracks at Bristol and Dover. Sadly, "Concrete Josh" doesn't hit the way "Concrete Carl" did when Carl Edwards had his success on concrete tracks back in the day. | ||
| 24 | Corey LaJoie | Thanks to a contrary strategy in the middle of the race, Corey LaJoie wound up leading a total of 33 laps at Dover. That mark is the second-most of his Cup career, and both such marks have some on concrete ovals; he led 48 laps at Bristol last fall. | ||
| 25 | Ryan Preece | Ryan Preece was left frustrated with the door foam fire that ended his race on Sunday, as he suggested that it was an avoidable issue. It was a bizarre way for Preece's day to end, and it also broke a streak of three-straight finishes inside the top 15. | ||
| 26 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s team felt that they got run over by Josh Berry as they were trying to rejoin the racing surface, but I would give the benefit of the doubt in that the exit of pit road back onto the racing surface at Dover is one of the more difficult in NASCAR. Either way, it ended a race where Stenhouse had spent much of the day running in the top 10. | ||
| 27 | Michael McDowell | A hub failure at Dover marked three straight DNFs for Michael McDowell, and this time there wasn't even the reassurance of having been racing for the lead (or the win) at the time of their demise. McDowell and his team need to have something good happen for them, and soon. | ||
| 28 | Christopher Bell | Let's update the tally for Christopher Bell's 2024: One win, three top fives and five top 10s, five finishes of 33rd or worse and three DNFs. Just truly maddening stuff. | ||
| 29 | Justin Haley | Lost in the shuffle of Dover was that Justin Haley had a fairly nice day. He came home 23rd, which marked his best finish since he ran 17th at Bristol in March. | ||
| 30 | John Hunter Nemechek | Kansas is a special place for the Nemechek family, as Joe Nemechek earned his fourth and final Cup win there in 2004 and John Hunter Nemechek got his very first Xfinity win there back in 2018. Nemechek heads there now coming off a 20th-place finish at Dover. |
