FORT WORTH, Texas — After going 18 months without a NASCAR Cup Series win, Chase Elliott had to get through a few extra laps at Texas Motor Speedway to finally get back to victory lane.
Elliott pulled ahead and cleared Ross Chastain on the first lap after the second restart in overtime Sunday, ending a 42-race winless streak for the 28-year-old from Dawsonville, Georgia.
"A lot of things went on our way today. I'm not naive to that," said Elliott, who won the 2020 Cup Series championship and has been voted the circuit's most popular driver by fans the past six seasons. "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. Chastain's Trackhouse Racing No. 1 Chevrolet got bumped from behind by Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron, who finished third after winning this race last year and was just behind RFC Racing's Brad Keselowski when the final yellow flag came out.
It was the fifth win this season for Hendrick and the 306th overall for NASCAR's all-time winningest team, but the first for Elliott in the No. 9 Chevrolet since a playoff race at Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway in October 2022. He now has 19 career wins as a Cup Series driver, but he endured a challenging 2023 season after missing multiple races early in the schedule after breaking his leg while snowboarding.
"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 Joe Gibbs Racing's 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's Toyota got loose on the outside going into the fourth turn on the 1.5-mile oval and went hard into the wall, bringing out the 14th caution and sending the race to overtime.
"Trying to go for the win ... got loose and spun out," said Hamlin, the only driver to lead laps in all nine points races this season.
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 when polesitter Kyle Larson, another Hendrick driver, wrecked after a crowded four-wide jumble back in the field.
On the first restart in overtime, Elliott was on the inside and took a hard shove from Keselowski, but Harrison Burton was wrecked within a half-lap.
AP photo by Tony Gutierrez / Chase Elliott (9) and Denny Hamlin come out of the fourth turn at Texas Motor Speedway in the final laps of Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at the Fort Worth track.In NASCAR's only stop this season at the Fort Worth track, which for the first time in 20 years won't host a fall playoff race, there were 13 leaders over the course of the afternoon.
Keselowski has now gone 107 races since his most recent win at Talladega in April 2021, and he is still looking for his first win since leaving Team Penske after the 2021 season to become a co-owner of what had been Roush Fenway Racing.
"The driver in me is frustrated because I feel like these are races I am good enough to win but don't have the speed enough to do it," Keselowski said. "The owner in me is mad as hell because it is my fault for not making the cars faster."
Hamlin was the third driver to wreck when running second in the race, and all of those crashes came in the same area of the track. Chastain became the fourth to crash from the No. 2 spot.
Michael McDowell was racing for the lead when he went through bumps in the fourth turn while on the outside of Chastain and racing for the lead on lap 142. The No. 34 Ford spun and slammed hard into the wall, and Chastain went on to win the second stage.
"It's my fault that I spun. It's not the track's fault," McDowell said.
Burton had taken the lead after going inside on lap 173 and getting three-wide off the backstretch with Bubba Wallace and Chase Briscoe, who were running up front after not pitting during the caution at the end of the second stage. Wallace got loose, moved up and made contact with Briscoe.
Larson won the first stage and led 77 laps before a lugnut came loose and the right rear wheel came off the No. 5 Chevrolet on lap 116. He had to serve a two-lap penalty after getting the wheel replaced, then went on to finish 21st. He led 99 laps at Texas last fall before spinning into the wall with 85 laps left.
Ford had the past two Cup Series champions in Penske teammates Ryan Blaney in 2023 and Joey Logano in 2022, but the manufacturer still doesn't have a win in its new Mustang Dark Horse this season. Blaney's playoff win last October at Virginia's Martinsville Speedway remains the most recent race victory for Ford.
The Cup Series will race next Sunday at Talladega, where Kyle Busch won last April and Blaney won in October.