MADISON, Ill. — The first caution for Sunday’s (Sept. 13) Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway flew on lap seven. The second yellow flew just a few laps later. Then there was another. And another.
And another.
With six cautions in the first 57 laps of a 240-lap affair, it was clear that the drivers, teams, media and fans were in for a long day.
By the time the dust settled, officials waved the yellow flag a whopping 18 times.
“Eighteen cautions? Is that like the most?” Connor Zilisch asked after the race.
It’s certainly close. The all-time record for the NASCAR Cup Series is 22 cautions, set in a 2005 Coca-Cola 600 that took more than five hours to complete. But 18 cautions still tied the Next Gen era mark and shattered the previous Gateway record of 11.
“It felt like a battle, survival of the fittest there at the end,” William Byron said.
Byron was involved in a multi-car crash on lap 96 that pancaked the nose of the No. 24 car. But where did he finish? Fourth.
In fact, only a dozen or so cars made it through the race clean. Nine cars ended the race in the garage, and almost every lead-lap car from 13th on back was nursing some form of damage from restart crash after restart crash.
So, why did the field collectively lose its mind?
“I have no idea (why),” said Bubba Wallace, who finished 14th after being involved in multiple accidents. “I don’t know. That’s a great question.”
The difficult-to-pass nature of Gateway didn’t help matters one bit. Restarts fanned both three and four-wide, meaning that for drivers who lacked speed, they saw opportunity to make hay when the field closed up.
That mentality led to some exciting racing, but total chaos as well.
“Me personally, I’ve never understood the three-wide, turn 1, lap one mentality,” 17th-place finisher Ryan Preece said. “Sometimes, people put such an emphasis on track position and get all you can on a restart that you throw your entire race away.”
“(The drivers) saw this thing coming down to restarts, and so they want to get it all in the first couple of corners, and then all it just takes is one slipped tire and you’re into the guy beside you and wrecking,” Denny Hamlin explained.
But the restart crashes were only one side of the coin. The other was the brake rotor failures that knocked drivers out, one-by-one.
Gateway is a track notorious for being hard on brakes, and the increase to 750 horsepower for 2026 — which led to multiple brake failures at Nashville Superspeedway in May — only exacerbated the problem for Gateway in September.
All in all, five drivers suffered brake failures: Zane Smith, Ryan Blaney, Noah Gragson, Chase Eliott and Chris Buescher.
Elliott’s brake failure collected fellow Chase (and fellow Chase driver) Chase Briscoe, the biggest incident with championship implications in a race that wreaked havoc on the Chase field. Elliott, Briscoe, Blaney, Buescher and Daniel Suarez failed to finish, while Tyler Reddick (25th), Ty Gibbs (18th) and Christopher Bell (19th) were all collected in multi-car wrecks during the final stage.
Up ahead of them, Kyle Larson celebrated a win and the eradication of a 51-race winless streak. The other five Chase drivers that finished in the top 10 felt like they escaped, celebrating that their day didn’t end any worse than it did.
Ahead of them all sits Hamlin, nine points to the good with a typically wild short track race at Bristol Motor Speedway up next. That’s where the chaos was supposed to come; instead, NASCAR race shops in North Carolina will find themselves busy cleaning up after Sunday’s mess.
Follow Stephen Stumpf on X at @stephen_stumpf
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
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