Chase Elliott dominated the second half of Sunday’s (May 3) Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway to win his second race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season.
It’s Elliott’s second career win at Texas and the 23rd of his Cup career. He becomes the second multi-time winner this season, joining Tyler Reddick, who has won five times.
“This is a testament to the whole No. 9 team but not just the No. 9 team but also everybody at Hendrick Motorsports,” Elliott told the FOX broadcast on the frontstretch. “We’ve not been where we wanted to be throughout portions of this season.”
Denny Hamlin finished runner-up, Alex Bowman finished third for the second straight race, Reddick finished fourth, and Chris Buescher completed the top five.
“I thought it was going to be so close if it went green, I thought I was going to get there,” Hamlin told the FOX broadcast on pit road about the final run. “I didn’t have great restarts all day and then you just get set behind a little bit.”
Daniel Suarez, Carson Hocevar, William Byron, Bubba Wallace, and Ryan Blaney finished in the sixth to 10th positions.
A late crash from Corey Heim, who led 69 laps today, set up a late-race restart, and Elliott was able to hold off the field to get the win while John Hunter Nemechek crashed on the final lap after Kyle Busch got up into him.
Elliott also won the second stage of the race, while Erik Jones collected his first career stage win in the first stage after staying out when a caution came out late in the stage.
That caution came when leader Christopher Bell got clipped by a spinning Todd Gilliland, which sent him around and into the outside wall, ending his day with a dead last, 38th-place finish.
Two other drivers who ran into trouble today were Joey Logano and Cole Custer after they collided on pit road. Ty Gibbs finished 36th after Ryan Preece made contact with the No. 54 car, sending him into the outside wall.
Later on, Kyle Larson lost control and crashed out of the event, finishing 34th as his Cup Series winless streak reaches 35 races.
Reddick holds his big points lead over second place Hamlin by 109 points. Elliott moved up to third with the win, while Logano fell out of the top 16 with his poor result today, putting Chase Briscoe back in The Chase by seven points.
Texas Cup Series Results
The NASCAR Cup Series will return to action next Sunday, May 10, at Watkins Glen International for the Go Bowling at The Glen. It will be the 12th race of the season, and coverage will begin at 3 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1.
Michael Bellifemini joined Frontstretch in February 2026 as a contributor. Bellifemini was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated from Seton Hall University. He called Seton Hall men's and women's basketball games for their college radio station, 89.5 FM WSOU, and continues to broadcast in the area. Outside of covering NASCAR, Bellifemini is also an avid baseball, football, basketball, and hockey fan and enjoys watching different sports leagues on a daily basis.
So a Toyota driver spins out to give a Toyota driver a better shot at a win? Never happened before has it?
Wonder if Hamlin’s going to complain about this on his podcast this week? Maybe he owes Ware another apology about Kansas.
Maybe Heim had to scratch an itch?