Dramatic fire ends Denny Hamlin's Texas NASCAR Cup race

The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota never saw the end of Stage 1 at Texas Motor Speedway

Denny Hamlin became the first driver to fall out of the race Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway with his day ending in a dramatic oil fire.

Hamlin was attempting to make up ground after some early miscommunication with the team. When Noah Gragson spun, forcing the first yellow flag of the race, the entire field dove to the pits ... except Hamlin. In some confusion over code words, he stayed out when he was meant to pit. He came to pit road alone, falling to the very rear of the field.

A frustrated Hamlin began his march forward, but it was slow going as passing is extremely difficult at the modern version of Texas. However, the No. 11 Toyota Camry began to slow abruptly with just a few laps to go in the stage. Off the pace, the car spun out in Turn 1, as flames erupted from under the car in what appeared to be an oil fire.

This will mark Hamlin's first DNF of the 2025 season, finishing 38th (last). He completed just 75 of 267 laps before the mechanical failure. It also ended an impressive streak of 21 consecutive lead lap finishes for Hamlin. The first stage ended under caution with Austin Cindric collecting taking the 'win' and collecting ten valuable bonus points.

“It was blowing up for about a lap or so before it really detonated," said Hamlin. "I tried to keep it off to keep it from full detonating, that was they can diagnose exactly what happened to it. It’s tough to say exactly what it is, but they’ll go back and look at it and we’ll find out in a few weeks.”

Speaking more on the rash of mechanical gremlins plaguing the Toyota camp, Hamlin said, “I’m not really sure. I’ve had blown engines in two or three season in-a-row now where we didn’t have any issues several years prior to that. Just trying to develop I'm guessing and trying to get more. Certainly, we feel like we need to get a bit more power but this was unexpected for us.”