The radio call came late. Alan Gustafson keyed up over the No. 9 frequency and told Chase Elliott he was a two-time Texas Cup winner. Elliott's response, in the press conference afterward:
"I thought, I'll be damned. I'd have never thought. For as hard of a time as I've given it, for some reason it likes me. It loved me back. I didn't like it, but it liked me. So I'm learning to come around a little bit."
Texas Motor Speedway — the 1.5-mile oval in Fort Worth that Elliott has publicly disliked for years — handed him the Würth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY by 0.407 seconds over Denny Hamlin. It was Elliott's 23rd career Cup win and his second of 2026.
It was also Hendrick Motorsports' fourth Texas Cup victory in the last six races there. Four different drivers. Same notebook.
"So many correlations I feel like to Martinsville in the way of just the way the team executed," HMS Vice Chairman Jeff Gordon said in the press conference. "Great pit stops, great strategy to get the track position and the car and driver to do it once they did. … Hendrick Motorsports has accounted for four of the last six wins here at Texas Motor Speedway."
The race that decided itself on a four-lap green flag.
Sunday's race came down to a four-lap restart.
Carson Hocevar led the field to green from his second consecutive Texas Cup pole. The Spire Motorsports No. 77 — fresh off Hocevar's first career Cup win at Talladega a week ago — controlled the opening 19 laps before Hamlin cleared him. Then Christopher Bell took the lead on Lap 47 and was beating back Hamlin in a high-line battle when Todd Gilliland spun in front of him in Turn 4. Bell took evasive action low, clipped Gilliland, and put his own No. 20 Toyota into the outside wall on Lap 68. Done. P38.
That was the day for several established stars.
Joey Logano went out on Lap 95 in a pit-road tangle with Cole Custer. Ty Gibbs hit the Turn 3 wall on Lap 110. Custer's damaged car gave up on Lap 173. Kyle Larson came to Texas with 10 career wins on 1.5-mile tracks and a 34-race winless streak. He lost it on Lap 180 and made hard contact with the outside wall. The streak is now 35.
Erik Jones, of all people, won Stage 1 in the No. 43 Legacy Toyota. Then the race got weird.
Corey Heim, the Toyota TRD development driver running an open entry that's ineligible for stage points or playoff points, pitted off-cycle, took over the lead at Lap 95, and ran 57 consecutive laps in front. Heim turned the strategic chessboard upside down. The lead group had to react. When he finally pitted on Lap 152, Elliott took over.
Elliott won Stage 2 at Lap 165. Then he held the point for 50 laps.
Hamlin started stalking him with about 11 laps left, getting the No. 9 to his left rear. Heim spun in Turn 4 — the day's seventh and final caution.
The restart came on Lap 264. Elliott chose the bottom. Hamlin pulled even on the side-by-side.
"Alex gave me a great push," Elliott said. "Was able to execute Turns 1 and 2, get clear, and then just kind of manage the last few laps."
Hamlin's version of the same restart:
"Just the way the side-draft works there into Turn 1, with him getting the push from the 48 (Bowman), it just allowed his momentum to pick up a little bit quicker than mine. I tried to hang on to the side, but I was just getting tighter the closer I was getting to him. So good, decent day. Just one short."
Just one short. That's Hamlin's 2026 in five syllables. Talladega P15. Kansas P4. Texas P2.
Bowman's back-to-back. And what it took to get there.
Alex Bowman finished third. P3 at Talladega the week before. P3 again here. His first back-to-back Cup top-fives since recovering from the 2022 Texas concussion.
Three years ago Texas put him on the sideline. This week Texas put him on the podium twice. Jeff Gordon called the arc without me asking him to:
"I've never had to overcome the adversity he's had to overcome. I think these last few weeks — not just the last two — when he's gotten back in the car has shown what he's made of as a human being. For him, Chloe, his fiancée, and their life that they're building; and then this team, for Blake Harris and everybody on there, they needed a spark, and it's nice that they've gotten that."
That's a vice chairman saying out loud what HMS hadn't been ready to say in a while.
The kid in the JRM No. 1 quietly had his best Cup oval.
Connor Zilisch — the JR Motorsports development driver running select Cup races for Trackhouse this year — qualified P12 and finished P16. Both career-best Cup oval marks. (His overall Cup high remains P3 at the Circuit of the Americas, a road course.)
Zilisch ran the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race Saturday for JR Motorsports, where he won Stage 2 and led real laps before a flat tire ended his afternoon. Then he came back Sunday and posted his best result on a Cup oval to date. Not a win. Not a podium. But a clean P16 in a race where four established stars went to the garage early and a fifth (Larson) went to the wall.
That's a development driver doing the assignment.
The Hendrick notebook, said out loud.
Let me tell you something about how this team is talking right now. Gordon, in the press conference, was asked how many cars realistically have a shot to win on a given day.
"12," he said. "(laughing) I don't know. I'm totally guessing. I have no idea, because track position is so important."
Twelve. He laughed when he said it. But the No. 9 team is talking like it has the formula for the 1.5-mile package — and Charlotte is coming in three weeks for the Coca-Cola 600. They feel the notebook.
Gustafson, asked about hostile fan and media reaction to some of his recent in-race calls, gave the line of the day:
"To steal a quote from David Goggins, 'You'll never find a hater who can do it better than you can.'"
That is a crew chief on the most popular driver in the sport. Talking about the noise. Without flinching. Carry that energy into Watkins Glen.
Standings.
Tyler Reddick still leads the season with five wins (none Sunday — he ran fourth on a two-tire stop and gained five spots from where he started the final restart). Reddick's lead held. Elliott's win likely vaults him into the top three. Bowman is back-to-back top-fives for the first time since the Texas '22 concussion. The full post-Texas points table will land on our standings page once NASCAR posts the official numbers tonight.
Larson, Logano, and Gibbs are the three names that need watching. Each of them DNF'd or finished worse than P30 in BOTH Talladega and Texas — three drivers, two consecutive weekends, the most attritional Cup stretch of 2026 to date. The Chase cut line will reflect that by Charlotte.
Up next: Watkins Glen.
Cup Race 12 is the Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International — Sunday, May 10, 3:00 PM ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. The 2.45-mile road course in upstate New York. Reddick is the defending Watkins Glen Cup winner. The Cup Series moving the Watkins Glen weekend out of August to early May is its own story; we'll get to that one.
For now: Hendrick has four of the last six at Texas. Elliott has two Texas wins now. The pit crew that Elliott called "phenomenal" — and that he said he hadn't done a good enough job of putting in position to show its talents — finally got the showcase it earned.
Texas didn't like Chase Elliott. He told us that himself. Texas might be over it now.