On a four-lap restart that decided the WĂĽrth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday (May 3), Chase Elliott took a push from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman, cleared runner-up Denny Hamlin off turn 2 and pulled away to win by 0.407 seconds.
It was Elliott’s second win at Texas, his second of the season and the 23rd of his career — and it made him the first repeat winner in the last 10 NASCAR Cup Series races at Texas.
Behind Elliott, Hamlin held second, Bowman backed up his push with third and Tyler Reddick and Chris Buescher rounded out the top five in fourth and fifth. Daniel Suárez, pole winner Carson Hocevar, William Byron, Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney completed the top 10 in sixth through 10th, respectively.
What Really Happened?
Stop asking what’s wrong with the No. 9.
For two and a half years, that’s been the lazy storyline around Elliott. The 2020 champion went through a stretch where wins dried up, the regular season felt like a slog and the perennial Most Popular Driver was suddenly less a title threat than a sentimental favorite.
That conversation needs to die.
What happened at Texas wasn’t a fuel-mileage gamble or a strategy fluke. Elliott didn’t lead until lap 152 of 267, when Corey Heim made a pit stop. From there, the No. 9 controlled the race. Elliott captured stage two. His pit crew ripped off its three fastest stops of the season. He stretched fuel, managed tires and then beat Hamlin on a green-white-checkered with the race on the line.
That’s not a hot afternoon. That’s a championship driver having a championship day.
Now look at the timing. Through 11 races, this is the earliest in a season Elliott has ever recorded multiple wins. Read that twice. Across 23 career victories, a Cup title and a decade of deep playoff runs, he has never started this fast. The driver everyone quietly wrote off as past his peak is, statistically, off to the best start of his career.
The reason nobody’s saying it out loud is the noise. Reddick is the runaway storyline of 2026 — five wins, the points lead and a 23XI Racing car that’s been the class of the field.
Hocevar broke through at Talladega Superspeedway in front of a roaring grandstand and rewrote the national narrative around Spire Motorsports in a single afternoon.
Christopher Bell’s misfortune soaked up the rest of the Toyota oxygen. And Elliott has just been doing what Elliott does when he’s right: showing up, running top five and letting results pile up without making a scene.
That’s the part people miss.
He doesn’t hang out the windshield. He doesn’t taunt anybody on the cool-down lap. He gives a clean post-race interview, thanks his guys and goes home.
In a sport that’s increasingly driven by clips and personality, quiet competence reads like decline. It isn’t.
Remember, too, that Elliott has historically been a second-half driver. The fact that he’s already at two wins this early, already a multi-time winner locked into the Chase conversation and already producing speed on intermediate tracks — the category of racetrack he supposedly couldn’t figure out anymore — should genuinely worry the rest of the garage.
Hendrick’s intermediate package, aside from Kyle Larson, looks alive again. The pit crew is faster than it was a year ago. Elliott is also racing with the patience of a guy who’s already won a title and doesn’t need to press.
If Reddick is the favorite and Hocevar is the disruptor, Elliott is the most dangerous thing on this grid: the guy who has done it before, who knows what a title run looks like from the inside and who is putting one together right now while everyone writes about somebody else.
Watch the No. 9. The conversation around him is about to flip.
Paint Scheme of the Race
This may be because I am on a diet and all I want is a sweet treat, but Cole Custer‘s Andy Frozen Custard No. 41 Chevrolet really caught my eye this weekend.
Unfortunately, the closest Andy’s is six hours away from the Bestor compound in Northwest Florida.
Custer unfortunately wound up 94 laps down in 35th place after Joey Logano ran into the back of him on pit road, thereby dropping him two positions in points to 36th.
What’s Next?
The Cup Series leaves the intermediates behind and points east. Next Sunday, May 10, is the Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International, with coverage on FOX Sports 1 starting at 3 p.m. ET.
A road course is exactly where Elliott’s case either grows another leg or quietly stalls.
He has historically been one of the best road racers in the field, but Shane van Gisbergen and Reddick will have something to say about that.
Either way, after Sunday, it’s fair to start watching the No. 9 the way we used to.