It’s June 30, 2024.
The NASCAR Cup Series is at Nashville Superspeedway for the 19th race of the season, and Denny Hamlin took the lead with seven laps to go after a fierce, 20-lap battle with Ross Chastain.
With the pass complete, Hamlin was getting ready to ride off into the sunset for the 55th Cup win of his career, his fourth of the 2024 season and his first at Nashville.
But wait, it’s not over yet. Austin Cindric spun on the backstretch with 2 laps to go, right when Hamlin was a turn away from taking the white flag and putting the race away for good. For the first time in four Cup races at Nashville, the winner would be decided in overtime.
And as the field got lined up for the first overtime attempt, no one — and I mean no one — in their wildest dreams could’ve imagined what was about to happen.
The race devolved into the mother of all trainwrecks, setting new Cup records with five overtime attempts and 31 extra laps beyond regulation. Cars were running out of fuel left and right, and the drivers couldn’t make a single clean lap without losing their minds over and over again.
Eight cars crashed out in overtime, with countless others taking damage. And by the time the checkered flag waved on lap 331, the finishing order was so randomized it was almost as if names were pulled out of a hat to decide the results.
Cindric’s spin was the catalyst for all of the mayhem, and the spin created a long-lasting ripple effect that crowned Joey Logano as the 2024 series champion.
You see, Logano entered Nashville 14th in the points standings. Two drivers (Cindric and Daniel Suarez) outside the top 16 in points had already won at this point of the season, so the No. 22 team was already feeling the heat of the playoff cut line after a horrendous start to the season.
Nashville was shaping up to be a race that wouldn’t change the status quo for the No. 22 team, as Logano was running 14th in the closing laps. But doors open and doors close throughout a race, and Cindric’s spin opened the door for Logano to pull off the improbable win in 5OT, where he seemingly defied all laws of math and physics by running the final 110 laps of a 1.333-mile track on a single tank of fuel.
The 5OT fuel-mileage win was Logano’s ticket to the playoffs, and without it, he wouldn’t have qualified for the postseason.
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