The NASCAR Cup Series saw a wild finish in Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400, with Chase Elliott sneaking past Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin on the final lap after multiple overtime restarts.
Elliott restarted 10th with two laps to go and maneuvered through the field on four fresh tires to steal the victory. It was the type of cinematic performance that NASCAR's most popular driver is no stranger to when he's within striking distance at the end of a race. It also begs the question as to why the No. 9 team can't put him in such a position more often.
With Elliott's third win in the past three seasons, maybe this can finally be a wakeup call for crew chief Alan Gustafson and company that in order to win championships in 2025, you need to win races first.
When Chase Elliott and the No. 9 team race to win, good things happen
All the talk in the NASCAR world this week has surrounded the bombshell rumor that the series could potentially be removing the playoffs and returning to a full-season points format. Despite how hard some fans try to convince themselves otherwise, everyone in the garage knows that drivers and teams would race completely differently in such a world.
Elliott was one of the first to point this out, which is funny, because of all of the top teams in the Cup Series, the No. 9 group are the ones who operate the least differently from the "race not to lose" approach teams would take without the playoffs to begin with.
“People would certainly run their races differently if that were the case, no question”@chaseelliott commented on how a 36-race points format would change the way drivers race#NASCAR #HollywoodCasino400 pic.twitter.com/cPVC9pqpaO
— Dalton Hopkins (@PitLaneCPT) September 27, 2025
Maybe though, after Elliott's beyond unsustainable regular season run of "consistency" (read: zero terminal issues) finally fell apart, the No. 9 team is finally getting it. His run at Kansas was a deviation from the norm from the start, as the 2020 Cup Series champion qualified fourth, his best (earned) starting spot since the race at Martinsville Speedway back in March.
All season long, Elliott and his team have unloaded with poor speed and spent Sundays with the goal of salvaging "good points days". That's great, if your name is Matt Kenseth and the year is 2003. It's not, and it's why the second-generation star entered the playoffs with only six playoff points from stage wins and race wins.
At Kansas though, Elliott was able to run inside the top five all race and even take the lead for 23 laps at the start of the final stage. When a caution came out with 15 laps to go for Kyle Busch littering debris on the track, pit strategy gave him an opportunity to pounce.
Ignoring that Gustafson's call for four tires put Elliott in a more difficult position than most of the leaders who took only two, he capitalized and punched his ticket to the round of 8. The Dawsonville, Georgia native's charge in the final two laps was similar to his other win of 2025, when he drove from seventh to first in the closing circuits at his home track of EchoPark Raceway in Atlanta.
There's a theme here: Elliott excels in situations in which the driver can be aggressive and lay it all on the line for a win, rather than when it comes to displaying the conservative mentality the No. 9 team has lived by for the past three seasons. If he's going to make his first Championship 4 appearance since 2022, he'll need three more weeks just like this one.