By STEPHEN HAWKINS AP Sports Writer
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Chase Elliott went low, got a push from his Hendrick Motorsports teammate and held on to become only the second NASCAR Cup driver with multiple wins this season.
Elliott stayed ahead of Denny Hamlin for the closing four laps after a final restart at Texas on Sunday for his second victory this year. He finished just ahead of Hamlin in both of those wins.
On that final restart at the 1 1/2-mile Texas track, Elliott took the bottom line and had teammate Alex Bowman behind him. He cleared Hamlin going onto the backstretch and remained in front to the checkered flag.
“I just felt like, man, if I didn’t get clear off of (Turn) 2, I was going to be in a lot trouble,” Elliott said. “So fortunately Alex gave me a great push. I was able to execute Turns 1 and 2, get clear, and then just kind of manage the last few laps.”
Elliott, voted NASCAR’s most popular driver each of the past eight seasons, got his 23rd career win and his second at Texas, where two years ago he ended a 42-race winless streak. He led five times Sunday for a race-high 87 laps, finishing 0.407 seconds ahead of Hamlin, closer than the 0.565-second margin when they finished 1-2 at Martinsville in late March.
Bowman, whose spin brought out a caution on lap 93, finished third. Tyler Reddick was fourth after winning five of the first 10 races this season for Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing.
Hamlin said the late push Elliott got from his teammate was the difference in Texas.
“It was just enough to slow my momentum and pick his momentum up,” Hamlin said. “Good, decent day, just one (spot) short.”
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 since Nemechek was able to get his car to the apron.
Chris Buescher was fifth, his first top-10 finish in 17 starts at track less than an hour from his hometown of Prosper.
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. He finished a spot behind Daniel Suarez, his Spire Motorsports teammate.
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 this year for 23XI Racing, led 69 laps, 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.
Bell rung out of the race
Christopher Bell, an Oklahoma native who considers Texas his home track, led 22 laps and was still near the front on lap 69 when he got clipped by Todd Gilliland, who spun ahead of him.
Bell bobbled and then slammed hard into the outside wall along the frontstretch, doing significant damage to the front right of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. He finished last in the 38-car field.
“I thought that I could shoot the gap on the bottom,” said Bell, who had led only six laps total his first seven starts in Texas. “I thought I did shoot the gap on the bottom but I got clipped.”
Pit road crashes
Joey Logano, who won at Texas last year, was going about 180 mph when he just avoided hitting the spinning car of Byron on lap 93.
Going much slower on the ensuing yellow-flag stop, the front left of Logano’s car was crushed when he was unable to avoid contact when Cole Custer stopped on pit lane with Ty Gibbs pulling out ahead of him. That knocked out Logano, whose winless streak is now 36 races.
During that same round of stops, Chase Briscoe got damage to his front right when pulling out of his box and getting hit by Kyle Larson. Hamlin was pulling out when he had a close call with Connor Zilisch.
Up next
The 2.45-mile road course at Watkins Glen in upstate New York, where last year Shane van Gisbergen of Trackhouse Racing became only the third driver to win four consecutive Cup races on road or street courses. In the first road race this year, Reddick held off van Gisbergen to win at the 2.4-mile Circuit of the Americas on March 1.