Elliott claims Texas for second victory this season
FORT WORTH, Texas – Chase Elliott stayed ahead of Denny Hamlin for the closing four laps after a final restart to win at Texas on Sunday, his second victory of the season and the 23rd of his career.
Elliott led five times for a race-high 87 laps and joined five-time winner Tyler Reddick as the only NASCAR Cup drivers this season with multiple wins.
After taking the bottom and clearing Hamlin on the backstretch on the first lap after the restart, Elliott managed the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet over the last few laps to get to the checkered flag.
When Elliott won at Martinsville at the end of March, Hamlin in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was also the runner-up there.
Alex Bowman, another Hendrick driver who overcame a spin on lap 93, finished third. Reddick was fourth and Chris Buescher fifth, his first top-10 finish in 17 starts at the 1 1/2-mile track less than an hour from his hometown of Prosper.
Elliott, who started 14th, had already taken the white flag when John Hunter Nemechek wrecked in the back of the field after contact with Kyle Busch. The caution flag never came out because Nemechek was able to get on the apron.
It was the second win at Texas for Elliott, who has been voted NASCAR’s most popular driver several years in a row.
Carson Hocevar, the polesitter at Texas for the second year in a row, finished seventh, a week after his breakthrough win at Talladega. He also won the Truck Series race in the Lone Star State on Friday night. Daniel Suarez, his Spire Motorsports teammate, was sixth.
Hocevar led the first 22 laps last year, three more than he did at the start of this 267-lap race, though he did get back in front for 18 more laps later Sunday.
Corey Heim, in only his third start for the Michael Jordan co-owned 23XI Racing team this year and 10th overall in Cup, led 69 laps in the No. 67 Toyota but with 11 laps left brought out the final caution of the day, the fourth because of a single-car spinout. The 23-year-old Heim was the Truck Series champion last year.
Flagg gets taste of NASCAR
NBA top rookie Cooper Flagg got a fast ride on the track before the NASCAR race in Texas with another 19-year-old, Cup Series rookie Connor Zilisch. A week after being named the NBA Rookie of the Year, Dallas Mavericks forward Flagg was the honorary pace car driver for the race in Texas on Sunday. Flagg set a host of records as an NBA teenager. Several hours before the green flag, Flagg took a ride on the 1 1/2-mile track with Zilisch. The driver is in his first full Cup season with Trackhouse Racing after winning 10 races in NASCAR’s second-tier series last year.
“We got going pretty fast, and I think half the ride I was more scared of what was going on,” Flagg said. “I’ve never been in a car going that fast, so it was pretty cool.”
Zilisch was driving well over 100 mph while giving Flagg an up-close look at the track.
So what do a couple of 19-year-old guys talk about while going around the track?
“I don’t know much about racing, but I think just being able to connect on the fact that we’re both young in our respective sports … that was really cool, and to be able to talk to someone that’s going through a lot of similar things at a time in your life,” Flagg said. “There’s just not many people that have been through this type of stuff at this age, so I think it was cool to connect on that.”