Würth 400: Chase Elliott tames Texas, earns second win of 2026

FORT WORTH, Texas — Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott tamed Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon in the Lone Star State, earning his second NASCAR Cup Series win of the 2026 season in the Würth 400 Presented by Liqui Moly.

The driver of the No. 9 Amazon Prime Chevrolet led 87 of 267 laps at the 1.5-mile track en route to his second career Texas win in the last three seasons.

“Man, first off, thanks everybody for coming out,” Elliott said. “Great crowd, as always. I have not been a huge fan of this place, and I’ve made that very obvious, but we continue to work hard. I really think this is a testament to the whole No. 9 Prime Video Chevrolet team. But not just the No. 9 team, but everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. We’ve not been where we wanted to be throughout portions of the season, but everybody’s just been digging in really hard — from the engine shop at Hendrick Motorsports to all the setup shops and everybody at Team Chevy.

“It’s just crazy. As much as we’ve struggled at Texas, to have won two races here now in the last few years is pretty wild. Just super grateful for all the people that helped make this possible and looking forward to celebrating with them.”

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin had a fast No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota all weekend long and ended up with his second runner-up finish of the year, both coming to Elliott.

“I could’ve risked it off of (Turn) 2 and crashed both of us,” Hamlin said. “I thought had I hung onto his quarter panel anymore, I just thought that I was going to end up hitting the fence. Just not quite what I needed. I got the first part of the restart really well just he got that push from the 48 (Alex Bowman) right there, right entering Turn 1 and it was just enough to slow my momentum and pick his momentum up. Really close — just not quite enough.

“These mile-and-a-halves have been really, really good for us on this 11-team and all of the Toyotas, really. We’re doing a great job with what we’ve got, and I wish we’d get the wins with as fast as we are, but we’re still putting together good races.”

Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman is continuing to turn his season around after a very unlucky start to 2026. Bowman, who missed four races due to vertigo and previously had a season-best finish of 18th before Talladega, has now earned back-to-back third-place finishes.

“I think we made some big gains on our No. 48 Ally Chevrolet from where we unloaded,” Bowman said. “We struggled in practice, but we qualified well. This team chipped away at it all day. There are some things we can definitely clean up. We still need to be better, for sure. We had a really good Chevy today. Proud of the pit crew. They did an awesome job. It’s nice to get this team some good finishes. It’s been tough on them this year and glad to bring home back-to-back third-place finishes.”

Results from the 2026 Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

23XI Racing’s part-time driver Corey Heim was having one of his best runs in just his 10th career NASCAR Cup Series start. Heim led 69 of 267 laps at Texas Motor Speedway and showed strong speed in his No. 67 Robinhood Toyota before a single-car accident ruined his day, resulting in a 31st-place finish.

Heim was not the only Toyota driver to have bad luck, as Christopher Bell, Ty Gibbs and John Hunter Nemechek were also involved in incidents that ruined their respective days.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell was leading before Todd Gilliland spun out in front of him, clipped him, and then sent him into the wall. A promising day for Bell turned into a 38th-place result.

Bell’s JGR teammate Gibbs got wrecked by Ryan Preece, while their Toyota teammate Nemechek got wrecked by Kyle Busch.

More chaos ensued for drivers on pit road, most notably Joey Logano, who, just after avoiding a single-car spin on track, came onto pit road and crashed right into Cole Custer.

Other drivers who had single-car spins in the Würth 400 included Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron.

Erik Jones earned his first career stage victory in Stage 1 at Texas after a strategy call paid off for the Legacy Motor Club driver. Before today, Jones had the record for most Cup Series starts without a stage win (332 starts), according to NASCAR Insights.

Spire Motorsports’ Daniel Suárez finished sixth, marking his fourth straight top 10 at Texas. Suárez and Byron are the only two drivers to finish inside the top 15 in every Next Gen race at the 1.5-mile track in the Lone Star State.

“Very proud of the No. 7 Freeway Insurance Chevrolet team,” Suárez said. “We had another fast Chevy this weekend. This weekend was a perfect example of having a fast race car and we just had a lot of things go against us, like the tire yesterday in practice. Today, the first run of the race, we just really struggled. The car had potential; we just struggled quite a bit. I’m just very proud of this team for never giving up.”

Bubba Wallace’s pit crew also had the fastest four-tire pit stop in Cup Series history.

GRID RANKING

The 2026 GRID Ranking is the 10th year of the world’s premier motorsports ranking system, which was initially released on Sunday, April 5.

The official ranking includes drivers participating in seven racing series (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, WRC, Supercars, MotoGP). Each driver earns GRID Ratings, which help determine their seeding in the GRID Ranking.

DRIVER	OLD RATING	PREVIOUS RANKING	MOST RECENT FINISH	NEW RATING	NEW RANKING
Tyler Reddick	20.87	2nd	4th	20.59	3rd
Chase Elliott	11.40	17th	1st	13.72	11th
Denny Hamlin	10.06	22nd	2nd	11.57	15th
Ty Gibbs	11.99	14th	36th	10.90	18th
Ryan Blaney	10.51	21st	10th	9.69	22nd

Week 5 of the GRID Ranking:

Week 5 of the GRID Ranking saw Tyler Reddick lose another spot, this time to Formula 1 driver Kimi Antonelli. In the NASCAR Rating, Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin jumped ahead of Ty Gibbs, with Gibbs going from second to fourth. Ryan Blaney dropped from fourth to fifth.

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Go Bowling at The Glen at Watkins Glen International on Sunday, May 10. Coverage will begin at 3 p.m. ET on FS1.

 

GRID Network