Trackhouse Racing's Ross Chastain used every bit of 600 miles at Charlotte Motor Speedway to go from last place to first place and win one of the crown jewels on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, the Coca-Cola 600.
Chastain now has four winning seasons in four years at the Justin Marks-owned team, and his win made him the eighth different winner of the 2025 season.
Hendrick Motorsports' William Byron dominated the race, leading 283 of 400 laps around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Concord, North Carolina oval and winning each of the race's first three stages. He looked to be on course to win both early-season crown jewels, as he opened up the year with a second straight Daytona 500 win in February.
But Byron's heartbreaking second place finish, which still saw him secure by far a race-high 65 points thanks to his three stage wins, wasn't enough to make the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet the biggest loser from Sunday night's race.
The Cup Series has now had eight winners in the season's first 13 races. With 13 races remaining on the regular season schedule, there is still a chance that there will be more than 16 different winners before the playoffs start.
And even if there are, there are still just 16 playoff spots.
All multi-race winners are locked in, so Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin, plus Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson, have punched their playoff tickets, as the 16 playoff spots go to the regular season champion and the 15 drivers who rank next highest in wins. There can't be more than 13 multi-race winners over a 26-race regular season.
Should there be more playoff eligible drivers than playoff spots, the tiebreaker to determine which single-race winners get in and which don't becomes points. It works the same way if there aren't enough winners to fill playoff spots, in that the tiebreaker then becomes points among the non-winners.
Of the five single-race winners, Wood Brothers Racing's Josh Berry is lowest in the point standings in 16th place. Team Penske's Austin Cindric is just ahead of him in 15th, though he'd be ninth without a 50-point penalty earlier in the season. Teammate Joey Logano is ninth, and Byron is the points leader.
Chastain is eighth after his win.
If there do end up being more than 16 regular season race winners, Berry, or really even Cindric, could end up being in a bit of a nervous situation, given their current points positions.
They certainly would have preferred to see Byron hold off Chastain to keep the winner total at seven for the year, but that did not happen. Instead, it was Chastain pulling the No. 1 Chevrolet into victory lane after the longest race of the year.
Race number 14 on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Cracker Barrel 400, which is set to be shown live on Amazon Prime Video from Nashville Superspeedway beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, June 1.