Chase Elliott became the second multi-time winner of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season in Sunday's Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Chase Elliott became the second multi-time winner of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season in Sunday's Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Elliott grabbed his second win of the season by a 0.407-second margin of victory over Denny Hamlin. The driver of Hendrick Motorsports' No. 9 Chevrolet led four times for a race-high 87 of 267 laps and won the second stage en route to his second win in 11 races this season.
This is now the earliest Elliott has ever reached multiple wins in a Cup season, besting 2022 when he won twice in the first 17 races.
With the win, Elliott has now also won two of the last three Cup races at Texas.
"It's so hard to win in the series and it's so hard to have success and to be competitive, and the crowd reception, it ended up being a good race and that helped make my opinion better [on Texas]," Elliott said. "I appreciate all the folks making it fun for me."
Elliott is now third in the points standings, 117 points behind leader Tyler Reddick -- and eight behind Denny Hamlin, who finished second.
Hamlin had a look at Elliott in the closing laps both before and after a late-race caution but couldn't get the right opportunity to try and get by.
"I could’ve risked it off of (turn) 2 and crashed both of us. I thought had I hung onto his quarter panel anymore, I just thought that I was going to end up hitting the fence. Just not quite what I needed. I got the first part of the restart really well just he got that push from the 48 (Alex Bowman) right there right entering turn 1 and it was just enough to slow my momentum and pick his momentum up. Really close – just not quite enough," Hamlin said.
Behind Elliott and Hamlin, Alex Bowman earned back-to-back top-five finishes for the first time since July 2024 when he won in Chicago and finished third at Pocono.
“I think we made some big gains on our No. 48 Ally Chevrolet from where we unloaded. We struggled in practice, but we qualified well. This team chipped away at it all day," Bowman said. "They did an awesome job. It’s nice to get this team some good finishes. It’s been tough on them this year and glad to bring home back-to-back third-place finishes.”
Chevrolet took five of the top-10 finishing positions with Elliott, Bowman, William Byron (eighth) and the two Spire Motorsports cars who started up front Sunday.
Daniel Suarez and Carson Hocevar finished sixth and seventh, flipping how they started the race where Hocevar and Suarez finished first and second.
Suarez struggled at the start of the race and fell outside of the top-15. However, a string of cautions and strategies put the driver of Spire's No. 7 Chevrolet up to sixth when the second stage ended and at the finish.
"We had another fast Chevy this weekend. This weekend was a perfect example of having a fast racecar and we just had a lot of things go against us, like the tire yesterday in practice. Today, the first run of the race, we just really struggled. The car had potential, we just struggled quite a bit. I’m just very proud of this team for never giving up," Suarez said.
Meanwhile, Hocevar kept the fans happy all day, leading five times for 40 laps and earning stage points in both stages. He finished second in the first stage and ninth in second stage.
"I thought we were fast. It's going to be another cap in our step to build the organization," Hocevar said.
Hocevar is now sixth in the standings, 12 behind Chris Buescher who finished fifth to match his points position.
Buescher appeared to fake out the drivers behind him but he explained the decision after the race.
"We were kinda reacting to those around us. They kind of bailed late and faked some. Did it work out? No one behind us really finished ahead of us. I'm glad we gave it a go," Buescher said.
Rounding out the top-10 were three drivers who came back from woes throughout the weekend: William Byron who spun on lap 93 and finished eighth, Bubba Wallace who finished ninth after starting in the rear with a backup car and Ryan Blaney who finished 10th after having issues on pit road yet again.
TOP-10 FINISHERS (LAP 267): Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Alex Bowman, Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, Daniel Suarez, Carson Hocevar, William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Blaney.
Riley Herbst finished 11th, scoring his best finish of the 2026 season after restarting inside the top-10 on the final restart. Drivers on new tires ultimately swept him up, including Erik Jones who finished 12th after winning the first stage. It was Jones' first career stage win.
Toyota teammate Corey Heim arguably impressed the most Sunday. In just his 10th Cup start, he took the lead twice in his No. 67 Robinhood Toyota Camry XSE and led 69 laps.
Unfortunately, the day ended with 11 laps to go when he crashed in turn three.
That set up a restart with a few laps to go where Kyle Busch's first good top-10 day in a while went away.
Entering turn three with two laps to go, Busch was running behind eventual 10th-place finish Ryan Blaney when he tried to clear John Hunter Nemechek but wasn't clear. After hitting the wall and going into turn three ahead of Nemechek, Busch slowed down and appeared to turn into Nemechek.
Nemechek crashed and finished 21st, one lap down, while Busch finished 20th as the last lead-lap finisher.
Nemechek sounded off on social media:
Busch reportedly declined to comment but stated the following to Richard Childress Racing, according to their race rundown:
“Disappointing end to the day for the No. 8 zone Watermelon Chevrolet team, but we are making steps in the right direction. We ran in the top-10 for most of the race today at Texas Motor Speedway, and started the weekend with a solid sixth-place qualifying effort. Unfortunately, we ended up with right-front damage after contact battling for position on the final lap. It turned our top-10 day into a 20th-place result," Busch stated.
The first stage ran clean and competitive with Carson Hocevar trading the lead off to Denny Hamlin, then to Chase Briscoe and then to Christopher Bell up until lap 69 when Todd Gilliland spun in front of Bell and collected him in a crash that ended his day, in 38th (last)
The caution falling late in the stage meant a few drivers stayed out, allowing Erik Jones to get his first career Cup stage win.
STAGE ONE TOP-10 FINISHERS (LAP 80): Erik Jones, Carson Hocevar, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Kyle Busch, AJ Allmendinger, Chase Elliott, William Byron, Denny Hamlin.
The second stage saw Byron's spin, Joey Logano crashing out after a pit road incident with Cole Custer and then Ty Gibbs crashing on lap 102. A longer green-flag run didn't end the game of survival as Kyle Larson crashed on lap 161, setting up a one-lap shootout for the stage win.
RFK Racing's Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece stayed out and vied for the stage win. However, Elliott swept them back to third and fifth, respectively.
STAGE TWO TOP-10 (LAP 165): Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Preece, Daniel Suarez, Chris Buescher, Riley Herbst, Carson Hocevar, Alex Bowman.
The only caution in the final stage fell for Heim's wreck.
Tyler Reddick led the points standings by 110 over Denny Hamlin entering Texas. Now, Reddick leads the standings by 109 over Hamlin as the series heads to Watkins Glen (May 10 at 3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90).
NASCAR Cup Series' 2026 Wurth 400 at Texas Race Results and Points Standings after Texas
