We’re going to have to catch our collective breath because the finish to Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway was absolutely bonkers. In a double-overtime finish, Chase Elliott incredibly emerged victorious after Denny Hamlin made contact with Bubba Wallace in a race for the win in Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap.
As Wallace went into the outside wall, and Hamlin’s momentum stalled, it allowed Elliott a path to the lead in the inside lane, and he never let off the gas as he breezed past them both to take a thrilling victory.
Race Results: Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas
Here is how the battle for the win played out:
THIS FINAL LAP WAS INSANE ? pic.twitter.com/g9ctVJ1TPx
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 28, 2025
While we, who watched it, have no idea how Elliott ended up taking the win in this race, did Elliott understand how he won?
“I don’t know, man,” Elliott answered when pressed on how he pulled off the win. “Everything worked out perfectly for me. Had a great push through one and two. That kind of all started with [Brad Keselowski]. Big run off of [Turn] 2. Seas kind of parted, and was just able to keep my momentum up. That was really it.”
Elliott continued, “Obviously, we still had pretty good tires compared to those guys, but what a crazy finish. Hope you all enjoyed that. I certainly did. Really proud of our team. Had a really solid weekend, win or no win.”
Elliott, who restarted from the eighth position and was in fifth when he took the white flag, made the conscious decision that he was not going to lift regardless of what happened as chaos was transpiring in front of him in the closing laps.
“I wasn’t going to lift, so I didn’t know what was going to happen. I figured at the end of the day, it was what it was at that point,” Elliott stated in his post-race interview on USA Network. “We were both wide open corner exit. Wherever I ended up, I ended up. At that point, we were all committed. Yeah, really cool just to restart and somehow win on a green-and-white checkered. Pretty neat.”
The win, Elliott’s second of the season, moves the Hendrick Motorsports driver automatically into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 8, which means he can now race stress-free next weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
After climbing from his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at the end of the race, you sort of saw Hamlin realize the gravity of what his final lap move for the win did in real-time. In an instant, a sure-fire advancement into the Round of 8 of the Playoffs was thwarted with the contact, and Hamlin didn’t collect his highly coveted 60th career win all in one fell swoop.
“Just super disappointing,” Hamlin explained. “I wanted it bad. It would have been [win No.] 60 for me. The team just did an amazing job with the car, just really, really fast. Gave me everything I needed. Got the restart I needed. Just couldn’t finish it there on the last corner. Obviously got really, really tight with the 23, and it just got real tight, and we let the 9 win.”
Hamlin, who dominated the race by leading a race-high 159 laps, won Stages 1 and 2 and turned the Xfinity Fastest Lap in the race, but a slew of issues, which cropped up throughout the day seemed to hinder his chances at a win. First, his throttle was sticking under a mid-race caution. Then, he developed a power steering issue, had an ultra-slow final pit stop, which mired him in the running order, and he had voltage issues late in the race.
Still, he almost won. But a week after a run-in with Ty Gibbs led to a slew of team meetings at Joe Gibbs Racing, you have to wonder if the scenario that played out in the closing laps at Kansas will spur a round of meetings at 23XI Racing, the team Hamlin owns and Wallace drives for.
Christopher Bell, who had Wallace nudge past him for the lead on the final restart, would end the race with a third-place finish, and Chase Briscoe would come home in fourth.
Wallace would hang on to score a fifth-place finish on a day when he likely could have picked up an important win. Despite the disappointment, Wallace kept his head held high in defeat.
“To even have a shot at the win with the way we started, I told Post, you could have fooled me. We were not good. We missed it on the fire-off speed. I just really appreciate the team,” Wallace said. “Two years ago, I’d probably say something dumb, [like], ‘[Hamlin is] dumbass for that move. I don’t care if he’s my boss or not,’ but we’re going for the win. I hate that we gave it to Chevrolet there.”
Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, William Byron, and Shane van Gisbergen rounded out the top-10 finishers.
For van Gisbergen, this marks his first career top-10 finish on an oval, and it came on a day that he had to come back from pre-race penalties due to an unapproved adjustment with his No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet discovered after pre-race inspection.
Van Gisbergen had to serve a stop-and-go penalty after taking the green flag in Sunday’s race, and would lose a lap early in the race as a result. However, van Gisbergen got the free pass on a Lap 90 caution, and from there, he would work his way methodically through the field.
An incident involving Carson Hocevar and Chris Buescher on Lap 260 sent the race into overtime, and on the first overtime finish attempt, a spectacular crash broke out when John Hunter Nemechek got into Zane Smith in Turn 3.
The contact from Nemechek would send Smith into the outside wall, and his No. 38 Ford would climb the outside wall, and he would ride the driver’s side door down along the wall for about a quarter of a mile before his car tumbled down to the bottom of the track.
Thankfully, Smith would walk away from the scary incident.
With one race remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12, Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott have both secured their advancement to the Round of 8. Kyle Larson is the safest driver, who has yet to advance to the Round of 8, as he sits 54 points above the cutline. Denny Hamlin (+48 points), Christopher Bell (+44), William Byron (+40), Chase Briscoe (+21), and Joey Logano (+13) are all above the cutline heading into a date with the Roval next weekend.
Ross Chastain (-13 points), Bubba Wallace (-26), Tyler Reddick (-29), and Austin Cindric (-48) need to make something happen next weekend if they want to continue their quest for the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Bank of America Roval 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on Sunday, October 5. That race will be televised on USA Network, and television coverage will kick off at 3:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.
