Winless Ross Chastain wanted to create some chaos in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
He accomplished that Sunday in the nation’s heartland.
Chastain opened the Round of 12 Sunday by racing away from William Byron in a 20-lap dash to win the Hollywood Casino 400 Presented by ESPN BET at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.
A non-championship competitor, the Alva, Fla., native used his No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet to hold off Byron’s No. 24 by 0.388 seconds for his fifth career victory in 217 starts and first win of 2024.
“I didn’t think after practice we had what it took — we’d been way stronger in the past,” said Chastain after eating a piece of watermelon following his trademark smashing of the fruit on the frontstretch. “It didn’t feel great all day … but it was better as the rubber went down.
“To win this today is part of that process I talked about at Nashville last year. We haven’t left or (gone) away. Nobody has slowed us down other than ourselves.”
Byron’s runner-up made him the points leader as the series heads to high-speed, high-banked Talladega Superspeedway for next Sunday’s race.
“He got the restart he needed,” Byron said. “I needed for it to be a longer run, but damn it, I wanted that one really bad. You know going to Talladega — you know what that is.”
Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Blaney and Ty Gibbs completed the top five, which featured three drivers ineligible for the title.
Of the championship contenders, polesitter Christopher Bell was seventh while Denny Hamlin was eighth. Chase Elliott, who started last after an engine change, gridded ninth.
Title contender Tyler Reddick, the defending Kansas race winner, came home 25th in the 10-caution race. Kyle Larson was 26th.
To open the 267-lap race and the Round of 12, Bell showed the way for the first 19 laps. Problems arose immediately for points leader Larson, who entered with a 39-point advantage.
After dominating the field last week by leading 462 of 500 laps in a win at Bristol, Larson cut a right-rear tire and smacked the Turn 1 wall to force the second caution on Lap 20.
The 2021 champion restarted in the back and ran a consistent second slower than Bell’s race-leading pace, but Bell himself had problems as the 80-lap Stage 1 neared its end.
With eight laps left, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver knocked the wall and turned the lead over to Byron, who went on to win the segment. Joey Logano and Blaney finished behind him, and Bell gathered it up to come in fifth.
Hamlin, who advanced at Bristol out of the bottom four, had to return to pit road after service, while fellow title contender Austin Cindric spun on the backstretch on Lap 167 for the seventh caution.
Just as he did at the end of the first stage, Bell slid up into the wall in the final laps as Stage 2 wound down. Alex Bowman got the maximum 10 bonus points with his first segment win, while Gibbs and Blaney finished second and third, respectively.
With 32 laps left, leader Kyle Busch brought out the ninth caution when he spun off Turn 2 in a one-car incident while racing closely with Chase Briscoe, who finished 24th.
–Field Level Media
