Elliott ends victory drought in Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas — Chase Elliott had to get through a few extra laps after 18 months since last winning a race.
Elliott pulled ahead and cleared Ross Chastain on the first lap after the second restart in overtime Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, ending a 42-race winless streak for NASCAR’S most popular driver.
“A lot of things went on our way today. I’m not naive to that,” Elliott said. “You have to be in the mix and you’ve got to be up front to even have things go your way. And we were close enough to do that.”
The race ended on the
16th caution after Elliott had taken the white flag for the 276th lap in a race scheduled for 267 laps. Chastain got bumped from behind by defending race winner
William Byron, who finished third and was just behind Brad Keselowski when the final yellow flag came out.
It was the fifth win this season for Hendrick Motorsports, the 306th for NASCAR’S winningest team, but the first for Elliott in the No. 9 Chevrolet since Talladega in October 2022.
“The longer it goes and the more ways you find to either not run good or lose races, you know it can make it tougher,” Elliott said. “It’s been an extremely important thing to me … to try to climb this mountain again together and try to get back to where we need to be as a group.”
Elliott and Denny Hamlin were at the front of the field after a restart with two laps left in regulation, and they were racing all-out when Hamlin went hard into the wall, bringing out the 14th caution and sending the race to overtime.
“Trying go for the win … got loose and spun out,” said Hamlin.
That was the second restart in the last 10 laps of regulation, with Hamlin leading on the previous one before Elliott edged ahead about the same time that another caution came out.