FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — 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.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
