Katherine Legge will return to NASCAR Cup Series action this Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), again teaming up with Live Fast Motorsports to make her seventh start behind the wheel of the No. 78 Desnuda Organic Tequila Chevrolet.
Legge made her Cup Series debut earlier this year at Phoenix Raceway, becoming the first woman to enter a Cup Series event since Danica Patrick made her final start in the 2018 Daytona 500.
The multi-disciplined driver from Guildford, England, has tallied two top-20 finishes this season in six Cup Series starts, with a 19th-place finish coming at the Chicago Street Course and a 17th-place result in the crown-jewel Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Legge additionally raced in NASCAR’s inaugural Cup Series race in Mexico City.
Legge’s most recent Cup race came at Watkins Glen International in August. She has also made six starts in the Xfinity Series this year.
“We’re honored to have Katherine back with us in the Desnuda car,” team owner BJ McLeod said in a press release. “Her talent and professionalism bring tremendous value to the team, and her leadership as a trailblazer continues to inspire both inside and outside of racing.”
Legge’s return to the Cup Series adds to an already diverse racing resume, which includes stints in IndyCar, IMSA, Formula E and NASCAR. Known for her adaptability across disciplines, the veteran driver brings valuable experience and perspective to the No. 78 team as she continues her part-time Cup campaign this season.
“I’m proud of how far we’ve come this season, gaining experience and speed at the pinnacle of stock car racing as a driver, as a team and with showcasing the Droplight brands like Desnuda,” Legge said. “This car represents more than just a livery. It’s a statement of purpose and individuality. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the perfect place to showcase what Desnuda and I both stand for—real passion, hard work and the courage to stand out.”
The NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs roll on to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with the Round of 8 kickoff race on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Championship 4 hopefuls will all be chasing Connor Zilisch this weekend after his win at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval granted him his 10th Xfinity victory of the 2025 season and a healthy 57-point buffer to the cutline.
2011 Daytona 500 champion Trevor Bayne will return to Xfinity Series competition this weekend, driving the No. 24 Toyota for Sam Hunt Racing.
Somehow, someway, Joey Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe are back in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 8 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. A gutsy decision by Wolfe to pit from 13th place with just 11 laps to go and forfeit their then-two-point advantage over Ross Chastain paid off aplenty. Fresher tires allowed Logano to remain on the attack while Chastain bled spots. Entering the final chicane tied at the cutline and needing one more spot to best Logano, Chastain’s desperation led him to spin Denny Hamlin and try to claim the final spot in the Round of 8.
Too little, too late. Chastain went around with Hamlin and ultimately fell four points short of advancing, permitting the No. 22 Team Penske team to continue its NASCAR Cup Series Championship defense. That’s terrible news for the other seven drivers who advanced to the postseason semifinals.
We’ve seen this mojo before from Logano. The team was ousted after the checkered flag flew at the 2024 Roval race, but a disqualification for Alex Bowman and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team after post-race inspection suddenly propelled the No. 22 team back into the final octet. A bold fuel strategy by Wolfe at Las Vegas to open the semifinals later led Logano to victory, a Championship 4 berth and Logano’s third Cup championship.
“Proud of Paul Wolfe. Made some really hard calls today,” Logano told NBC Sports. “Three-stopping the end there, kind of an audible there at the end. Just our fall-off was a little too much, so making that call there at the end was ultimately what kept us there in the game with just a few left.”
Leaving the door open for them to do it all over again? That could spell disaster for anyone else chasing a championship in 2025. Hamlin, who is one of those other seven drivers, had passed Chastain on the final lap, placing Chastain in a must-pass-now scenario.
“Truthfully, I wish I would have just known what the last-lap scenario was,” Hamlin said of his late pass on Chastain that sent the No. 1 into desperation mode. “And then I can make the best decision I can for me.”
What that boils down to is hoping anyone but Logano makes it this far in the postseason.
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media
And yet this is nothing new for Logano, who at age 35 is continuing to flex his muscle as one of the Cup Series’ elite. Despite ranking seventh in Passing Rating and 10th in Speed Rating, Logano is the best defender in Cup, according to NASCAR Insights’ season-long rankings. All he needs is track position — sometimes via speed, sometimes via fantastic pit calls — and Logano can do the rest to keep competitors behind him.
That, in large part, is what makes the No. 22 team lethal in the postseason. Given an inch, they will take a mile, and they will force you to go through them. And with a chance to eliminate Logano from being a real threat for the championship — Logano has past wins at Las Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville and of course Phoenix — the Cup field just couldn’t get rid of him. Fans at the Charlotte Motor Speedway knew it, too, and let Logano hear their displeasure after the race. With a Round of 8 berth in hand, he didn’t mind.
“Is that me? Is that who they’re booing at?” Logano said as his TV interview played over the public address. “Oh well. We’re still alive, baby! We’re still going. I’m so excited. …
“It’s the drama of the playoffs. If you want drama, the playoffs bring it every time.”
The theatrics reached their fever pitch, and Logano was left as the last man standing, smiling his way into the Nevada desert with another chance to make NASCAR history, this time pursuing a fourth Cup title that would tie him with Jeff Gordon for fourth-most all-time behind Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty and Jimmie Johnson (seven). And all Logano needs is a chance.
“A championship performance from the team,” he said. “Wish I was a little faster, but overall, I couldn’t be more proud of the team. We still got a shot.”
The polls are open for the National Motorsports Press Association’s 2025 Most Popular Driver Award. Fans can vote up to five times per day per unique email address for their favorite driver in the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Simply visit the Most Popular Driver landing page and click on the series logo for the series you want to vote for, select your favorite driver and click the submit button to cast your vote. Fan Rewards members will earn 25 points on their first vote from the Rewards dashboard.
The polls are open from noon ET on Monday, Oct. 6, until noon ET on Monday, Nov. 3. We’ll update you with the top 10 vote-getters in each series on Oct. 15 and again with the top five vote-getters in each series on Oct. 22. The winners will be revealed on Nov. 4 at the NASCAR Awards banquet in Scottsdale, Arizona, after Championship Weekend. The NMPA will also send out a press release that announces the winners.
Be sure to come back to NASCAR.com for the top-10 and top-five updates and continue voting to help your favorite drivers in each series cross the finish line.
Chase Elliott has won the Most Popular Driver Award in the Cup Series for the past seven seasons, while Justin Allgaier and Rajah Caruth took home the honors in the Xfinity and the Craftsman Truck series in 2024, respectively.
The 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs field that opened the 10-race postseason is now cut in half. Eight drivers survived the year’s second elimination Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, while four more lost their eligibility for the Bill France Cup.
The playoffs will roll on with next Sunday’s 400-miler at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET, USA, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, HBO Max), but first, a breakdown of an eventful Bank of America Roval 400 and the playoff perspective that became clearer after an eventful Round of 12 finale.
WINNER
Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The top-billed favorite among playoff and non-playoff drivers alike ran his road-course win streak to five straight, tying Denny Hamlin for the most Cup Series wins this season. Van Gisbergen led 57 of the 109 laps and his 15.160-second margin of victory ranked second only to his own 16 1/2-second advantage at the end of the inaugural Mexico City event in June. The shoo-in Sunoco Rookie of the Year also reached six career wins in just 46 starts, becoming the fastest to reach that mark since A.J. Foyt hit that plateau in 1972.
Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The former Cup Series champ’s winless spell has now reached 20 races, but he’s showed signs of momentum in the Round of 12. Larson logged top-10 finishes in all three of the round’s races, highlighted by a runner-up effort Sunday at Charlotte. Those results — plus a gathering of points at each stage Sunday — helped him advance before the final Roval stage.
Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Bell started the playoffs with a 29th-place thud at Darlington, but it’s been mostly positives in the races since then. Sunday marked his second consecutive third-place finish, stretching his run of top-10 results to five straight. Those consistent conversions helped him clear the elimination bar by a whopping 60 points.
WHO’S NOT?
Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The lone remaining playoff driver for Trackhouse fought gamely in the final stretch, but his last gasp to avoid elimination came up four points short. Those efforts were at least partly undone by a pair of miscues on pit road — a Lap 27 overshoot of pit exit that cost him 14 positions, and a Lap 88 speeding penalty when he left his pit stall in the wrong gear. He tried to hold off a charging Joey Logano in the points hunt, driving on older tires for the home stretch, but his advantage slipped away. His head-of-steam run into the final chicane nudged Denny Hamlin out of the groove, but also sent his own No. 1 Chevy spinning. He backed across the finish line in 21st place.
Austin Cindric, No. 2 Team Penske Ford. A collection of mishaps in the race’s first half doomed the 27-year-old driver’s already slim hopes for reaching the Round of 8. Cindric overshot the backstretch chicane on Lap 9, looped his No. 2 Ford a lap later after contact from Justin Haley’s No. 7 Chevy, then sustained bigger damage after Carson Hocevar locked up his No. 77 Chevrolet and barreled into him in the front chicane on Lap 33. It all added up to multiple laps behind the wall, a 36th-place finish in the 37-car field and the loss of postseason eligibility.
BUBBLE WATCH
RANK
DRIVER
+/-
1
Denny Hamlin
+8
2
Ryan Blaney
+6
3
Kyle Larson
+4
4
William Byron
+4
CUTLINE
5
Christopher Bell
-4
6
Chase Elliott
-14
7
Chase Briscoe
-14
8
Joey Logano
-24
NASCAR INSIGHTS
Not surprisingly, the two drivers atop the scoring pylon were also aces in the NASCAR Insights metrics. Race winner Shane van Gisbergen was easily No. 1 in speed and restarts, and runner-up Kyle Larson was among the top five in four of the five analytics categories (defense, speed, restarts and pit crew). The best pit crew for the day was the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevy team for Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but second on the list was Joey Logano’s No. 22 Team Penske group, which made the most of their service stops, helping keep their driver’s title defense alive.
QUOTABLE
“I trust Paul Wolfe.” — JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Team Penske Ford, on his veteran crew chief’s pit-stop call with 11 laps remaining, which gave him a tire edge for the final run to the checkers.
NEXT RACE
The Cup Series Playoffs move into their next phase Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where a treacherous three-race Round of 8 will begin. The South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) will mark the last race of the season on a 1.5-mile track. From there, the Cup Series field will experience a pair of extremes — its largest oval at 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 19, and its smallest at the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway on Oct. 26. Those three races will determine the four drivers who will race for a championship Nov. 2 at Phoenix Raceway, and Las Vegas could help set the tone.
CONCORD, N.C. — Strategy for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval was largely determined — and altered — after Saturday’s practice session.
A new-to-the-track Goodyear tire produced lap times that were roughly two to three seconds slower than the 2024 edition of the Bank of America Roval 400. More critically, teams saw a lap-time fall-off of roughly four seconds over the course of the tire life, a dramatic slowdown that forced teams to deviate from previously laid plans.
Teams were no strangers to this particular tire compound, as it’s the same tire teams used at the five other road courses on the 2025 schedule. That’s, in part, what made the Roval wear so drastic.
“Yeah, it was a bit of a shock,” race winner Shane van Gisbergen said. “I think our outright pace was two seconds slower than last year, and then you would fall off another four seconds off what we did last year. That was a big surprise. I don’t think anyone expected that. Yeah, as a driver, you want to be flat-out the whole time and pushing hard, but also, those races create mixed strategies and different pit cycles and stuff.
“Probably more interesting as a fan and seeing people come and go, and a lot more passing. I’m all for whatever makes better racing. It’s frustrating having to drive and save the tire the whole time, but if it makes good racing, I’m all for that.”
Adam Stevens, crew chief of Christopher Bell’s No. 20 Toyota, echoed his surprise post-race despite his team’s third-place finish.
“I think it caught, certainly us off guard,” Stevens told NASCAR.com. “I don’t know if I could say it’s true for everyone, but yeah, it was a different race for sure.”
Teams scrambled to make whatever adjustments they could to their cars for the final race of the Round of 12, but the rules only permit so many drastic changes. Much like the extreme tire wear that caught teams by surprise at Bristol Motor Speedway, Stevens said teams could make their tires last if they were permitted more flexibility to change their car setups. But much of the car’s settings are locked in during the week.
“Most of the setup decisions are made before you leave for the track,” Stevens said. “And the car’s impounded after inspection, and the list of things you can change is pretty small. So if you feel like you’re way off, there’s just not a lot you can do to remedy it. And certainly, if we had access to every setup parameter, we would have changed an abundance of things that we couldn’t change.
“It’s the same for all of us. We just had to make the most of it with what we had, and I think (we were) probably about as good as we were going to be. But you know, if we were running this race again tomorrow, we’d come back with something pretty different.”
David Jensen | Getty Images
Billy Scott, crew chief of the No. 45 Toyota for driver Tyler Reddick, knew his team needed to chase the win since they entered the elimination race 29 points beneath the cutline. Starting from pole afforded the team early track position, but as other teams split the stage by pitting midway through the opening 25-lap stint, Scott kept the No. 45 on track to save a set of tires for later. Ultimately, the strategy didn’t work out and Reddick was eliminated from the postseason, along with his 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace, Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric.
“The strategy going in was focusing on winning, so we weren’t too worried about getting stage points or keeping the track position there,” Scott told NASCAR.com. “In hindsight, though, I think we probably would have fared better to have followed the group in that stage, but I think also we could have been led to a point we felt necessary to pit again in Stage 2 like we did and run out of tires. We just didn’t have a good long run car.
“We came here trying to be a little more aggressive on some setup stuff, trying to find a little bit more speed that we needed to keep up with the 88 (van Gisbergen) and I think it backfired, in a sense, with having tires that wouldn’t last 10 to 12 laps. We were certainly on the short side of that.”
Multiple strategies were utilized throughout the pits, with some teams choosing to pit twice during the final stage and some opting for three stops. Who chose what was dependent on car strength and track position. But in the end, the speed of SVG overcame any sort of tire drama, propelling him to his fifth straight road-course win — no matter the tires.
“We could run second or third, and that was about it,” Stevens said. “We just didn’t have anything for the 88, and we knew coming in, he was going to be the car to beat. If we’d had a little bit cleaner day, certainly second was on the table, but it was going to take circumstance to move up one more spot.”
NASCAR officials have disqualified the No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota, driven by Riley Herbst, after the car failed to make minimum weight after Sunday’s Cup Series race at the Charlotte Roval.
The rookie driver had originally crossed the line in 30th, one lap down at the 17-turn, 2.28-mile road course. It’s the second Roval race in a row where officials have disqualified a car for failing to make weight, as Alex Bowman’s playoff run came to a halt with a similar issue last year.
Herbst had multiple hiccups on the afternoon, flattening his own tire on Lap 58 after a retaliation attempt on Ty Dillon. Moments later, he went spinning off the bumper of Kyle Busch coming through the Turn 17 chicane.
The No. 35 car, as well as the No. 41 Ford piloted by Cole Custer, will return to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for further inspection. There were no other issues.
Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s race, leading 57 laps and cruising to a 15.160-second triumph over defending winner Kyle Larson.
CONCORD, N.C. — The drama of the postseason doesn’t get more tense than Sunday’s Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano crossed the finish line 20th on the final lap, when he was in a dead heat with Ross Chastain at the cutline for the final transfer spot into the Round of 8. As the three-time series champion completed the frontstretch chicane, two cars were spun backward just before the checkered flag — Denny Hamlin’s and Chastain’s.
Logano beat Chastain by 0.167 seconds as the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet drove backward across the line.
When the smoke settled, Logano grasped the final semifinal spot by four points.
“If you’re one of those people that say playoff points don’t matter, stage wins don’t matter, regular-season races don’t matter — go watch that,” Logano said.
For 109 grueling laps around the 17-turn road course/oval hybrid, Logano and Chastain were nearly inseparable at the cutline.
One lap, Logano would be ahead. Then the next, Chastain would slide into the eighth spot. And with heavy tire falloff heightening the importance of strategy and pit-road execution, Sunday shaped up as a three-hour game of chess between the No. 1 and No. 22 teams around the 2.28-mile circuit.
The No. 22 crew slipped up first with a slow change on the right-front tire in the final stage as Chastain drove by their pit stall.
But the race flipped back in Logano’s favor after a costly speeding penalty by Chastain on the final stop with 20 to go, which the 2022 Championship 4 finalist ultimately said was the reason he won’t race for the Bill France Cup for the remainder of the season.
“I single-handedly took a car out of the Round of 8 and a chance to go to the round of four,” Chastain lamented. “In two months, we’ve elevated ourselves from, I say, an 18th-place car to an eighth-place car. Today, we were good enough to run top five, and I took us out of that. It’s all on me.”
As the laps wound down, No. 22 crew chief Paul Wolfe made the gutsy decision to pit Logano with 10 to go in hopes of being able to either force Chastain and the No. 1 team to cover or have the tire advantage to make up the spots to elevate above Chastain on the cutline.
Chastain ran the final 20 laps without pitting, and Logano was forced to try to make up as ground as possible. But with Logano not having the outright speed, he needed Chastain to lose spots.
AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick got by. Then, Bubba Wallace and Chase Briscoe. Chastain lost the spots, and the pressure was on to hold serve, but he was unsuccessful. Ford drivers Josh Berry and Todd Gilliland slipped past the No. 1 Chevy with Hamlin serving as the final point to get Logano through.
Hamlin passed Chastain on the final lap in Turn 7, and Chastain attempted a last-ditch effort in the frontstretch chicane that ultimately sent both the No. 1 and No. 11 spinning before the checkered flag — cementing another gutsy call for Wolfe as a success.
“Unfortunately, we just didn’t have the speed, and it just makes it hard to call the strategy at times,” Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “They’re running numbers based off of an average lap-time curve, right? And at one point, I’m just, like, ‘guy, we got to figure this off of our lap times, what we’re capable of doing because we have all the programs that are running and telling you, is it faster to stop two or three times?’ Finally there at the end, once Ross got to us there before that stop, I was like, ‘listen, just what’s our numbers telling us for us?’ And it told us we were faster to stop again. I said, ‘well, it doesn’t matter what the 1 does, we’re going to stick to our strategy,’ and obviously it paid off, and did what we expected.”
Hamlin, who advanced to the Round of 8 by 33 points, was collateral damage and finished 23rd after straightening out his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. The 44-year-old veteran said he was unaware of what the points scenario was between Chastain and Logano on the final lap.
“Honestly, I was just running. I saw the 1 was fading. I didn’t see the 22. I assumed the 22 was way ahead of us. So honestly, I was driving blind. I had no idea the points situation,” Hamlin said. “I was just trying not to wreck the 1. He was fading, but I didn’t want to get into him or anything like that. I didn’t want any parts of it. No one told me anything, so I just had absolutely no idea.”
David Jensen | Getty Images
“They were innocent bystanders in it,” Chastain said of spinning Hamlin. “And whether he knew or not, I don’t know. I would hate to be in that position. The past speaks for itself, and I’m more aware of my surroundings. I am sorry to them, sorry to Denny, I’m sorry to JGR and his whole team. They were definitely innocent bystanders.”
Chastain’s crew chief Phil Surgen called the final lap ‘suspenseful.’ He could only helplessly watch the No. 1 car try to survive and advance on track.
However, he said he’s overall proud of the fight from his team with a handful of low points throughout the 2025 season.
“We still don’t feel good about where our speed’s at and how competitive we are,” Surgen told NASCAR.com. “But through the lull in the summer that we had with some wrecks and some lackluster performance, everybody dug in deep and started the playoffs. We started qualifying better. We started finishing better, putting races together. The pit crew was rolling, and just all that energy that came together in the playoffs was really great. Hopefully, we can build on that more for the end of the year and for next year.”
Another year, another bid into the Round of 8 as Logano makes the semifinal round for the 10th time in the playoff era.
The trust between Logano and Wolfe only continues to grow, and they’ll begin the Round of 8 at the same track that set them up for a championship last season – Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
“In my opinion, there’s no one better than Paul at calling a race,” Logano said. “He’s really, really good at it, so I trust that he makes the right calls.
“What you did in the past never guarantees success in the future. But to be able to still be around — that’s all you’ve got to do in these playoffs. Just stay alive. It’s been a grind so far and we’ll grind it out to the very end.”
The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 8 field is cemented after non-playoff driver Shane van Gisbergen picked up his fifth consecutive road-course victory Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano clinched the final spot in the semifinal round, using fresh tires after a pit stop with 11 laps to go to sneak past Ross Chastain by four points. Tied going into the final corners, Chastain entered the frontstretch chicane at high speed, knocking Denny Hamlin around in a last-ditch attempt to advance. Chastain also spun, reversing to the start/finish line but not in time to advance as Logano picked up multiple spots in the melee.
Chastain had two issues on pit road Sunday afternoon, overshooting pit exit after Stage 1 and speeding during Lap 87 service.
William Byron, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin all advanced based on finishing position at the Roval. Byron placed 11th, Briscoe 14th and Hamlin 23rd.
Both Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell clinched Round of 8 spots earlier in Sunday’s 109-lap thriller, Larson advancing after placing second in Stage 1 and Bell advancing after finishing seventh in Stage 2. The drivers scored a combined 14 points and 11 points in the opening two frames, respectively.
A pair of former Cup Series champions already clinched their spots in the semifinal round before Roval weekend. Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney picked up his third win of the season two weeks ago at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports scored a thrilling victory last weekend at Kansas Speedway.
Chastain, Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric were eliminated.
CONCORD, N.C. — As expected, road-course maven Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400, but that was only a small part of the story at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course.
Long after van Gisbergen took the checkered flag to record his fifth straight road-course victory of the NASCAR Cup Series season, Ross Chastain made a banzai run in the frontstretch chicane and wiped out Denny Hamlin’s Toyota in a desperate attempt to secure the final spot in the playoffs’ Round of 8.
Spinning after the contact with Hamlin’s car, Chastain threw his car into reverse and sped backwards across the finish line, but the effort proved futile. The final Round of 8 spot instead went to defending series champion Joey Logano, who finished 20th and advanced by four points over the Trackhouse Racing driver.
A pair of mistakes on pit road cost Chastain dearly. At the first stage break, he ran wide into the 90-degree corner at the exit from pit road, missed the turn and came to a stop, losing 15 positions to restart 30th.
After recovering from that error and putting himself in position to advance, Chastain sped on pit road on Lap 87 of 109, ran long to the finish and lost too many spots on the final two laps to hold off Logano.
“(Trackhouse owner) Justin (Marks) hired me to carry this 1 car and to drive it and to be a leader, and I just completely unraveled our day,” a crestfallen Chastain said. “We definitely had the speed on the last lap, yeah, and missed turn 7, and I slid the rear tires and let the 11 (Hamlin) by.
“Yeah, not acceptable. I just completely … you know, just completely unacceptable.”
Logano was delighted to escape the race at the 2.28-mile circuit with the opportunity for a fourth NASCAR Cup Series title intact.
“Such a close finish there,” he said. “Yeah, knew it was within a point there (before the last-corner collision). I knew we were going to be tied there at the end, and Ross was going to do whatever he had to do to make it happen. Geesh, just wasn’t quite fast enough today with our car.
“It’s the drama of the playoffs. If you want drama, the playoffs bring it every time.”
Eliminated along with Chastain were pole winner Tyler Reddick (10th), Bubba Wallace (15th) and Austin Cindric, who needed a win to advance and instead finished last (37th) after a litany of issues throughout the race.
Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott already had advanced to the Round of 8 with respective Round of 12 victories at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway. Race runner-up Kyle Larson, third-place Christopher Bell, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Hamlin and Logano joined them after Sunday’s elimination race.
Both Larson and Bell made van Gisbergen’s task harder than usual. The New Zealander, however, was so good at managing his fragile tires that he finished the final 59-lap stage on two pit stops compared with three for his closest pursuers.
The result was a whopping 15.160-second margin of victory over Larson for the driver of the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The victory was his fifth of the season and sixth overall, and his five straight road course wins are one short of Jeff Gordon’s series record, set from 1997 through 2000.
Both Bell and Larson were aggressive in their attempts to unseat NASCAR’s current road course king. On Lap 63, Larson muscled his way past van Gisbergen, with Bell following into second.
After a cycle of green-flag pit stops, the Kiwi passed Bell for second. Eight laps later, he dived to the inside of Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet in the Turn 7 hairpin and regained the lead.
After another round of pit stops, SVG and Larson swapped the lead with significant contact between their cars before van Gisbergen passed Larson through the backstretch chicane on Lap 98 and held it the rest of the way.
“Yeah, just started getting hot and sliding around, but what an awesome race,” van Gisbergen said. “Kyle and Christopher driving really good and got a little rough, but, man, the battle was awesome.
“With the Chevy, I lost it a little bit at the start of Stage 3, and whatever they did for the rest of the race, unbelievable. Really enjoyed that, and that was a long time waiting, hoping the yellow wasn’t going to come out (as he ran late on older tires).”
Briscoe made the Round of 8 by 19 points with a 14th-place finish despite feeling ill during the race. At one point, he asked for a bag of ice, which he stuffed inside his driver’s suit.
“It was definitely an odd day,” Briscoe said. “We definitely just weren’t that great. I don’t know. They gave me a pill in the beginning, and I felt a lot better. I was just so dizzy … I’ve been fighting something all week, and I sound terrible, I’m sure.”
Non-playoff drivers Chris Buescher, Michael McDowell, Ryan Preece and Daniel Suárez finished fourth through seventh, respectively. Elliott was eighth, followed by AJ Allmendinger and Reddick.
The Round of 8 begins next Sunday with the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Note: The No. 35 Toyota driven by Riley Herbst was disqualified in post-race inspection for failing post-race weights. All other cars cleared inspection, validating van Gisbergen’s victory. The Nos. 35 and 41 are returning to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for teardown inspection.
