KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Enter the Great Disrupter.
Ross Chastain’s No 1. Trackhouse Chevrolet came to life in the second half of Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 and beat William Byron’s Chevrolet to the finish line in a hotly contested round of 12 opener in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Chastain grabbed the lead from Martin Truex Jr. moments after the final restart on lap 248 at Kansas Speedway and held off a charging Byron by 0.388 seconds to thwart the playoff driver’s bid for automatic advancement into the round of 8.
Having failed to qualify for the postseason this year, Chastain reveled in his first victory of the season, his first at Kansas and the fifth of his career.
“For us on this 1 team, it’s what Cup racing is all about,” said Chastain, who led 52 laps. “It’s what (team co-owner) Justin Marks bought into Trackhouse with Pitbull, bought into NASCAR with Trackhouse to do stuff like this — to disrupt.
“Look, there’s been times this year where we couldn’t have disrupted the minnow pond outside of Darlington, let alone a Cup race. It’s hard. It’s really tough. To come and do this, there are times where I didn’t think after practicing and qualifying we had what it took. I thought we have been way stronger here in the past. It didn’t feel great all day, but our Kubota Chevy, it was better as the rubber went down, and the adjustments were great.”
Byron led 24 laps but couldn’t overcome Chastain’s aerodynamic advantage over the closing laps.
“Yeah, just clean air,” Byron said ruefully. “I feel like he got the restart he needed to, and I was in the second row just trying to clear those guys. Once I got clear of them, my balance was OK. Just a little bit tight, but just kind of inching up on him. I needed probably, you know, for it to be a longer run being in second.
“Damn it, I wanted that one really bad. It just sucks, man. You’re so close, and you know going to Talladega you know what that is. So just sucks, but proud of the effort.”
Truex finished third after restarting in the top lane and surrendering the first two positions to Chastain and Byron. Playoff driver and defending series champion Ryan Blaney rallied to finish fourth after an unscheduled pit stop for a loose wheel.
Ty Gibbs, eliminated from the Cup Series playoffs at Bristol in the final round of 16 race, came home fifth, followed by playoff drivers Alex Bowman, Christopher Bell (the pole winner), Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott, who started from the rear of the field after an engine change in his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Byron heads to next Sunday’s race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway as the series leader, with a six-point edge over Bell and Blaney and a 34-point margin over ninth-place Tyler Reddick, the first driver below the cut line for the next round.
Hamlin and Bowman are fifth and sixth in the standings, 11 and eight points above the elimination line, respectively.
For Kyle Larson, the top seed in the playoffs entering the round of 12, Sunday’s race was an unwelcome instance of déjà vu. Reminiscent of his early exit after slamming the wall in Turn Two in the first round of 16 race at Atlanta, Larson cut a right-rear tire and bounced off the Turn Two wall on Sunday at Kansas just 19 laps into the race.
During the subsequent 56-lap green-flag run to the end of Stage One, Larson complained of a vibration in his No. 5 Chevrolet, fell one lap down and finished the stage in 35th place.
Larson got his lap back as the beneficiary car under caution for Daniel Hemric’s spin on lap 143 and mitigated some of the damage to his points position with a 26th-place finish. Larson leaves Kansas fourth in the standings, 18 points above the current elimination line for the round of 8.
Reddick, Daniel Suárez, Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric weren’t as fortunate.
Reddick, the defending race winner, could only manage a 25th-place result and left Kansas four points below the elimination line. Suárez finished 14th and trials Elliott and Joey Logano (tied for eighth) by 14 points.
Briscoe fought an ill-handling car and finished 24th, falling 25 points down to eighth place. Cindric sustained damage during a spin on the backstretch on lap 157, finished four laps down in 34th and trails Logano and Elliott by 29 points.
Seeking his first victory of the season — with a record 19-year streak of winning at least one race per season on the line — Kyle Busch held the lead on lap 226, with Chastain in pursuit. But as Busch attempted to put Briscoe a lap down through a narrow gap at the top of the track, his car broke loose and spun off Turn One, causing the ninth caution.
“I’m sure he was racing to stay on the lead lap with whoever was in front of him there,” said Busch, who finished 19th. “Granted, they have a race to run, but back in the old days when you were under 30 (laps) to go or whatever it was, lapped traffic would kind of lay over and give you a lane and let the leaders race.
“I just wasn’t getting that, so I tried to force my hand into getting that and get to his outside, and for whatever reason, it just gave all the air in all the wrong places, and I spun out.”
The race featured 30 lead changes among 15 drivers, the latter a track record. Bell led a race-high 122 laps. Hendrick teammates Byron and Bowman won Stages One and Two, respectively.
The Cup Series will continue the round of 12 at Talladega Superspeedway next Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).