NASCAR Cup at Texas Top 10 Breakdown: 2026 Wurth 400

FORT WORTH, Texas – Chase Elliott earned his second NASCAR Cup Series win at Texas Motor Speedway in three years and his second win of the 2026 season in Sunday's Wurth 400 at the 1.5-mile track.

Elliott led the most laps of any driver in Sunday's race. However, he had challengers throughout the day that made the win easier said than done.

Here is a breakdown of the top-10 finishers in the NASCAR Cup Series' Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway. 

1. Chase Elliott

Yet again, Elliott and the No. 9 team didn't have the best car but managed to execute a much better race than their competitors and won because of it.

Elliott may have taken the lead for the first time with 112 laps to go but he couldn't be shaken once he got there. He led 87 of the final 112 laps and held off challenges from Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin to reach multiple wins at the earliest point in a season in his career. 

Elliott has two wins in the first 11 races, besting two wins in the first 17 races in 2022. That year, he scored a career-high five wins in a single season, tying his 2020 championship season.

Elliott is third in the NASCAR Cup Series points standings, just eight points behind Denny Hamlin and 38 ahead of Ryan Blaney, heading to Watkins Glen where he has won multiple times before. 

2. Denny Hamlin

With one of the best cars on the day, Hamlin came up short again of getting his second win of the 2026 season. 

Hamlin led 21 laps, all early on in the race when he showed he had one of the best cars in the race. He took the lead from Carson Hocevar and led 16 laps before teammate Chase Briscoe got out ahead of him with a fast pit stop and teammate Christopher Bell passed him with a blisteringly-fast car.

After a wreck wiped out Bell and even immediately before, Hamlin was left with the best car on the track but losing track position in the first stage and finishing 10th in the stage – behind several other cars on similar strategies – set him back for the rest of the race. He finished fourth in the second stage, behind Elliott and Tyler Reddick, which was where he settled for essentially the rest of the race despite making a couple of runs at Elliott.

Business as usual for Hamlin is elite as usual for him. Like in 2020 and 2021, he is second-place to someone who is having a historically-great season. 

However, there is a long way to go to determine the championship and Hamlin is setting himself up well to shake off the label of being the greatest driver to never win a championship in what could be his last legitimate chance at getting it done.

3. Alex Bowman

With every week that Alex Bowman has runs like he had at Talladega and now Texas, the burning, annual discussion of "Who will take over the 48 car?" notches down a couple more degrees. 

Bowman finished third for the second week in a row, giving him back-to-back top-five finishes for the first time since winning in Chicago Street Course and finishing third at Pocono Raceway in 2024.

If Bowman can stay healthy and continue to post finishes like these, there is no one else available who has proven they can fit the Hendrick look and the Hendrick stats like he has.

Carson Hocevar? Locked down at Spire without having to change a thing. Connor Zilisch? A phenomenal talent but hasn't proven he is worth taking over Bowman. Corey Day? Still needs development but is a possibility for the future.

Bowman is 34th in the Cup points standings, now 127 points below the Chase cutline. If he wants to make the Chase, he has to make up an average of eight points on the cutline every week. Texas saw him make up 15 points, which is plenty but he will need quite a few more weeks like that to get close to Chase contention.

On other hand, Bowman's No. 48 team is only 83 points below the cutline for the owner's Chase. Needing to make up an average of five points to get in that 16-man fight, that is far more doable for him. 

Regardless, Bowman needs to continue what he is doing to continue proving why he is the irreplaceable guy for the No. 48 car for the future. A win wouldn't hurt either but getting ahead like this is a good step for an organization that has received a clear challenge from other organizations who have caught up this season.

4. Tyler Reddick

As Kevin Harvick once said about a particular seven-time champion and rival peer of his, "they have a golden horseshoe stuck up their..." you finish the sentence. 

A caution with 10 laps to go and a 110-point lead over Denny Hamlin prompted crew chief Billy Scott to bring his five-time winning No. 45 Toyota and driver Tyler Reddick to pit road from third to see what they could do in the closing laps.

Sure enough, that black-and-yellow Toyota buzzed to eighth, then seventh, then sixth, then fifth and up to fourth and appearing destined to get an astonishing sixth win of the season. 

That didn't pan out, after finishing second in the second stage and appearing to be the closest challenger to Chase Elliott, but the team took a chance and didn't really lose.

In fact, he lost just one point to Hamlin, who is now 109 points behind Reddick.

5. Chris Buescher

Here's some numerology for you:

Chris Buescher raced the Fifth Third Bank car on 5/3 and finished fifth after starting third.

Not only that but Buescher also earned the fifth-most points of any driver and ranked third for driver rating (114.0) and average running position (sixth) in Sunday's race. 

The cherry on top is he is now fifth in the points standings after all of that. 

Buescher heads to Watkins Glen where he hasn't finished worse than ninth in the NextGen era and has finished third and first in the last two years. 

Combined with the Coca-Cola 600 coming up at Charlotte Motor Speedway, another intermediate track, and Buescher could start the summer with the most momentum of any driver.

6. Daniel Suarez

Suarez started the race in second but dropped so far that he risked falling out of the top-20 and going a lap down if his pace didn't improve.

In racing, just like in life, you have to be good to be lucky, and a caution flew in the first stage that led to two other cautions where strategies shuffled around and put Suarez back inside the top-10 as the second stage went green for 54 consecutive laps. 

Suarez kept up his track position and finished sixth in the second stage before getting sixth in the race overall.

Suarez now has eight finishes of 12th or better in the last 10 Texas races, including seven top-10 finishes. More importantly, on the season, he sits 14th in the points standings and is 36 points above the Chase cutline. 

While 15 races is a long way to to go in the regular season, Daniel Suarez showed Sunday that if his team can pick up where they left off from at the end of the Texas race and can stay consistent while others have issues, they'll have no problem getting in the Chase.

7. Carson Hocevar

All the buzz at Texas Motor Speedway was around the 23-year-old phenom after his huge first career win at Talladega Superspeedway and he lived up to the hype masterfully.

After starting the weekend off with a win in Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, Hocevar put his No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet on the pole for the second year in a row at Texas with teammate Suarez joining him on the front row. 

Wherever Hocevar went this weekend, it felt exciting, different – even standing outside of his hauler impromptu to sign autographs for fans three hours before the race – and that energy carried into the race. 

Hocevar led five times for 40 laps, taking the lead at the start of the race, then while going on a different strategy than everyone else three different times and not playing nice with Ty Gibbs – another aggressive driver who isn't as popular as Hocevar. Every time he took the lead, there was a noticeable response from the fans. 

While Hocevar didn't ride the 'Dente (or, with Spectrum as a sponsor, the fiber line? Celebration name is a work in progress...) to victory lane again, he followed up his Talladega win with earning the fourth-most points of any driver Sunday. That moved him to sixth in the Cup points standings, putting him in one of the sought-after spots for starting the Chase. 

With 15 races until the Chase begins, there is still a long, long way to go to see if Hocevar can actually secure that seed for the Chase. However, if the No. 77 team can get through some of their weaker tracks (Watkins Glen, road and street courses) and have another upswing in performance this summer, we may be talking about them as a dark horse for the Cup championship.

STAT: After 11 Cup races, Hocevar was 18th in the standings in 2025 and 20th in 2024 with the No. 77 team that had ranked 35th in 2023 and 34th in 2022 after 11 races.

8. William Byron

Comeback kid number one, Byron finished ninth in the first stage before spinning right at the start of the second stage. If it wasn't for Joey Logano's wreck avoidance being better on the track than on pit road, Byron likely would've joined teammate Kyle Larson in the garage area with a wrecked racecar and stayed outside of the top-10 in the standings.

Instead, Byron survived, got fresh tires and worked his way back up to the top-10 at the finish. He now sits 10th in the standings, 73 points above the Chase cutline. 

9. Bubba Wallace

Comeback kid number two, Wallace wheeled a backup car to the top-15 by the first pit stop and spent 161 laps in the top-15 before finishing ninth.

Wallace's season has been a tale of contrasts. He has eight finishes between fifth and 11th but his other finishes were 34th, 36th and 36th. That has him 11th in the standings, 69 points above the Chase cutline but now 113 points behind the second-place points position he held earlier in the season. 

With Watkins Glen next, Wallace needs to get another finish of fifth to 11th, even if it is very quiet, to keep him in any kind of championship or Chase contention this season.

10. Ryan Blaney

The driver of Team Penske's No. 12 Ford will be a championship contender if his pit crew can figure out how to not lose significant ground on pit road and Penske can keep improving their intermediate package.

Blaney spent just 59 laps in the top-15 after starting 31st, earning no stage points and never looking like he was a factor for the win after having the best car last year

On the bright side for Penske, Austin Cindric repeated his Kansas performance as he spent 238 of 267 laps in the top-15, which was the sixth-most of the 38 drivers in the field. That gives some hope to Penske that they can improve.

Blaney heads to Watkins Glen where he ran second to Shane van Gisbergen last year.