With six laps to go, Ross Chastain pulled underneath William Byron going into turn 1 with the lapped car of Denny Hamlin getting a front-row seat to the action.
Hamlin spent much of the event tailing Byron, but a pit miscue ripped away his chances at claiming his second Coca-Cola 600 victory. Byron showed the way for much of the night, but on a long run, his car struggled, especially when influenced by the dirty air of lapped cars ahead of his Axalta Chevrolet.
Chastain started shotgun on the field and spent the last 591 miles slowly but surely creeping his way into the frame, passing each and every one of his competitors before facing his final foe.
To see how we got to this moment, let’s go back to the opening green flag.
Chase Briscoe and Kyle Larson took the front row for the 66th running of the Coca-Cola 600-mile race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, leading a full field of 40 cars to the green flag, the first for brand-new media partner, Amazon Prime Video.
Larson wasted little time with Briscoe on the start, surging ahead to lead the first lap in his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Camaro. The 2021 series champion arrived in Charlotte via helicopter after falling out of the Indianapolis 500 earlier in the day due to an accident midway through the event.
Though it looked as if the 5 car might set sail, his teammate William Byron roped him back in and took the lead for a few laps prior to Larson wheeling back around him on the ninth lap.
Byron kept in touch while Larson held the advantage with new player Tyler Reddick entering the fray by passing Briscoe for third. In the back of the field, Carson Hocevar’s Chili’s Camaro made headway in the first 20 laps, rising from 39th to 24th position.
Until lap 37, Kyle Larson looked to be comfortable cruising at the head of the pack, but in turn 3, he broke traction running close to the wall and made significant contact, upsetting the balance of his Chevy.
Just five laps later, that upset Chevy threw a fit when it got loose out of turn 4, spinning into the infield before getting it going back in the right direction and bringing out the first caution of the race.
Four drivers were nearly caught out in a bad way by the timing of the yellow as Ryan Blaney, Austin Dillon, Ross Chastain, and Josh Berry pitted prior to the spin. Thankfully, that quartet took the wavearound under the yellow flag to get back on the lead lap for the remainder of the first stage.
Before the race could resume, Josh Bilicki’s AstraZeneca ZERO Prostate Cancer Ford Mustang lost its right-rear wheel after the field took the choose, elongating the caution.
Brad Keselowski suffered a vehicle interference penalty under the yellow that dropped him to the back of the field for the restart where he quickly made up for lost time by picking up 11 spots in just eight laps.
Over the course of the stint to the stage finish, Byron lead the way while being followed closely by a host of drivers, namely Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, Christopher Bell, and John Hunter Nemechek.
Coming to three laps to go in stage 1, Byron’s teammate Alex Bowman broke loose coming out of turn 4 just like Larson before him, pounding the outside wall on corner exit prior to taking an infield detour. He managed to make it to the finish after extensive repairs, ending the night 29th, three laps down.
When the green-and-white checkered flag waved at the end of lap 100, Byron took his fourth stage win of 2025 with Reddick, Bell, Nemechek, AJ Allmendinger, Buescher, Denny Hamlin, Noah Gragson, Chase Elliott, and Michael McDowell all collecting stage points.
As for some of the poor qualifiers, their days started to look up as the Sun disappeared behind the grandstands as Hocevar climbed from 39th to 11th, last-place starter Ross Chastain rallied from 40th to 21th, and Brad Keselowski rebounded from a poor qualifying effort to go from 35th to 20th in the first 150 miles.
The green flag returned to the skies on lap 108 with Byron and Reddick racing wheel-to-wheel around Charlotte’s bumpy, rough-and-tumble track surface before the 24 car wrangled the top spot away once again.
Green-flag racing would be short-lived as the turbulent air from the wall of traffic ahead of him caused Jimmie Johnson to push into the outside wall in turn 4, collecting Connor Zilisch and Cole Custer on lap 111.
The lap 118 restart saw Byron scamper out into clean air while Bell went backwards, falling from third to seventh in just under a lap. While running in the top-20 on the lead lap, Shane van Gisbergen nearly found himself in trouble when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. gave him a tap in the trioval, but SVG gathered it up.
While the midpack couldn’t stop getting into it with one another, Carson Hocevar surged ahead, ripping the fourth spot from Allmendinger on lap 123 and solidifying the 77 car as a force to be reckoned with last night.
Green-flag pit stops kicked off with Nemechek bringing his No. 42 Dollar Tree Toyota first that eventually helped him nab even more stage points. A race-altering caution nearly flew during this period when Riley Herbst spun into the pits and sat near pit entrance, but his No. 35 Monster machine was able to continue.
The rest of the second stage played out in Byron’s favor, opening up a seven-second lead to second-place Denny Hamlin by the time the green-and-white flag flew with Reddick, Hocevar, Nemechek, Allmendinger, Chastain, Erik Jones, Gragson, and Elliott earned stage points.
Keselowski hobbled his way to the end of the second stage, over a lap off the pace to the 24. Sitting in 34th place, it seemed like the 6 team’s race was dead in the water. Ryan Blaney spent much of stage 2 slowly climbing his way up the leaderboard, winding up in 20th by “halftime”.
By this point, the back-to-back Daytona 500 champion set the pace for 160 of 200 laps and swept the first two stages, but William Byron couldn’t exactly relax as Denny Hamlin looked to snag another Crown Jewel.
Byron jumped out to an early advantage to start the third stage, but Hamlin hounded him for the latter half of the stint, constantly peaking the nose of his No. 11 National Debt Relief Toyota wherever clean air could find it.
Just as it looked the 11 would contest the 24, Zane Smith’s No. 38 Benebone Ford lost the nose on the exit of turn 2 with his rear end coming around, sending him into the inside wall and ending his night.
A lap after the restart, and all Hell broke loose in the back half of the top-10.
Daniel Suárez worked his way to the front from the 25th starting spot and occupied the inside, pole sitter Briscoe rode on his quarter panel in the middle, and Ryan Blaney flanked Briscoe to the outside with the 19 just next to the 12’s left-rear quarter panel.
When the trio exited turn 4, they ran out of space and patience as Briscoe and Suárez squeezed Blaney, causing Briscoe to wreck both drivers as well as sweeping Kyle Larson and Justin Haley into the brief melee on lap 245.
For the rest of the third stage, it came down to a battle of wills between Hamlin, Byron, and Hocevar.
Each driver held a pretty wheel as they scattered across the aging asphalt, searching high and low for grip. Byron went wherever Hamlin didn’t go, and Hocevar often opted to scoot around the apron.
The 44-year-old veteran endured a challenge from the 22-year-old sophomore prior to getting a chance to pounce on a vulnerable Byron, taking his first lead of the day on merit just after the 250-lap mark.
Around 10 laps to go in the third stage, Hamlin’s Toyota began pushing in the corners, allowing Byron’s Chevy to dive underneath him to complete the stage sweep as Hamlin, Hocevar, Reddick, Chastain, Allmendinger, Bell, Elliott, Briscoe, and Ryan Preece collected the final allotted stage points.
Under everyone’s noses, a couple of drivers generated some passing glances from spectators. In the span of 100 laps, Brad Keselowski saved his race, rising from 34th at the end of stage 2 all the way up to 13th when the final green-and-white checkered flag fell.
Shane van Gisbergen managed to stay on the lead lap all night through 450 miles, a testament to his improvement on the ovals, but it wasn’t all sunshine and roses for the Legacy Motor Club bunch.
After their owner-driver Johnson crashed out of the event, Nemechek and Jones put up respectable points in the second stage and seemed poised to contend as the Moon replaced the Sun in the sky. Through the next 150 miles, they both fell outside the top-10, which was the first time that had happened to the 42 car all night.
The night never improved for the 42 crew as Nemechek bounced off the wall in the final stage and ended his once-promising night in 27th place, two laps off the pace. Jones picked up the pieces left behind and steadily wheeled his way back to 13th by race’s end.
Hamlin’s team delivered a lightning-fast pit stop to get their No. 11 Camry out first ahead of Hocevar and Byron, the latter of which would have to start in row 2 for the first time since the initial green flag.
Instead of finding out what Byron’s car was truly made of in traffic, the engine on the No. 77 Chili’s Chevy Camaro went south, expiring in the middle of turn 2 on the restart and later causing a lap 308 pileup that included Buescher, Ty Gibbs, and Bubba Wallace.
Just like that, the story of the night — a sophomore driver on a developing team running with the sport’s best on the biggest stage in the longest race — went up in smoke.
Yet another polite skirmish between the 24 and 11 on the ensuing restart granted Byron the advantage. Reddick attempted to fight his boss but couldn’t find a way by, opening the door for Ross Chastain to fly by on lap 324.
The 2022 winner of this event, Hamlin charged ahead with the Axalta Camaro in his sights. A bold move on lap 328 saw him whisk the lead away briefly before Byron snuck back by the 11 car four laps later.
Austin Dillon set off a flurry of pit stops after hitting his pit on lap 342 with Bell, Byron, Reddick, and others following suit soon after. Reddick would be caught for speeding on the exit of pit road while Ross Chastain used the clean air from being in the lead to extend his first run two extra laps.
By the time Ross accelerated off of the pit lane and merged back onto the backstretch, he sat an insurmountable eight seconds off of his final pass.
What did the eighth-generation watermelon farmer do? He harvested the performance of his life.
The race went green to the end without interruption, leaving just the top-2 to duke it out between them. In all fairness, these two diligent racers remained at their peskiest and cleanest, making sure not to run their competitor out of room and racing hard with respect.
What the announcers failed to pay attention to during the end of green-flag pit stops was the 1 car chewing into the gap to the 24 car lap after lap after lap.
Oddly, Hamlin received a troubling radio communication with just under 30 laps to go, telling him that he needed to make another pit stop because his gasman didn’t get the 11 car full of gasoline. Devastating.
Reckoning with losing is bad enough in and of itself, but to make matters worse, Ross Chastain zipped up behind the 11 car and skated by to take the runner-up spot, setting his sights on Byron.
After 10 laps of diligent study to size up the 24 car, Chastain pulled up to Byron’s bumper 10 laps after passing Hamlin and immediately put the Axalta crew on high alert for the final 15 laps.
While that was going on at the front of the field, Brad Keselowski rallied from a really late pit stop to his first top-5 finish of the 2025 season as the rest of the drivers that started near him wound up in trouble.
A chess match emerged at the front of the field. Byron exhibited masterful work with the rooks, eliminating several of Chastain’s options for moves by riding the wall where he could control the boundaries of the track.
Not to be outdone, Chastain worked with his pawns, his knights, and his bishops to start picking off Byron’s advantage one by one until the 24 left one of his rook’s vulnerable with just seven laps remaining.
Ross already mounted one charge that Byron furiously fended off with aggressive blocking, so he knew the winning move required a different approach.
Byron did what he could on the frontstretch to mitigate the gap to Chastain, even trying to use the newly-lapped driver of Denny Hamlin as a pick on the bottom.
Before we rejoin the top of this article, let’s flash back to Saturday really quick.
Chastain topped the charts in multiple metrics this weekend, showing speed earlier in the weekend for the first time in what feels like forever. And, it all went up in smoke from a tire that went flat at the wrong time.
Not only did they start dead last, they didn’t get a chance to set a qualifying lap because NASCAR alerted the team that the No. 1 car was no longer able to be repaired, meaning they needed to prepare a backup at the shop.
Luckily for Trackhouse Racing, their home base remains in North Carolina, so Ross could get fitted for the seat around 10pm Saturday night — the first time he ever sat in that car — and get home in enough time to rest. If you looked at Denny Hamlin’s eyes on Prime all night, he needed every minute of sleep to help him focus.
It’s important to remember that Chastain lamented Trackhouse’s overall performance, explaining that all three drivers on the team lacked comfortability and confidence in their race cars after Texas, just three weeks ago.
In a field of 40 of the best drivers in the US, in the series’ longest race, in a car assembled overnight, in a race where he started dead last, and in a race where he nearly got trapped a lap down before lap 50, Ross Chastain ate up an eight-second deficit in 40 laps to put himself in position to snare a Crown Jewel victory.
At this point, William Byron spent an unrelenting 283 laps on point, equating to 424.5 miles. If someone looks at this race in five years and only looks at the racing-reference page, they might get the impression that Byron dominated handily and lost the whole thing in the last few laps.
But, it was more complicated than that. His three biggest threats of the night fell to the wayside after a blown engine, a self-destruction, and a pit lane blunder. William Byron and the 24 team faced their fair share of strong cars all night, and they routinely stood tough and came away with the advantage.
Even when he lost the lead, the Charlotte native pressured the leader until they gave it back, so it wasn’t like the 24 car shriveled in dirty air like it did after setting the world on fire at Darlington last month.
With a second Crown Jewel win on offer for the two-time Daytona 500 winner, Byron wanted nothing more than to reward Rick Hendrick’s recent decision to extend the driver of the 24 through the end of the 2020s.
In turn 1 on lap 395, Byron gave it his best shot, occupying the middle of the track while waiting for Chastain to make his move. Chastain timed it perfectly, diving to the apron on entry before drifting up into the 24’s path and forcing the Axalta machine to scrape the outside wall a bit coming out of turn 2.
Byron made a few stabs at shortening the gap, but he never got alongside Chastain again. On the final lap, Byron scraped the wall once more before making a big dive into turn 3 that couldn’t stick.
That left one driver to take the victory, and it was none other than the driver of the No. 1 Jockey x Folds of Honor Chevy Camaro as Ross Chastain came from 40th to 1st in 394 laps to claim his sixth career Cup Series triumph in the 66th running of the Coca-Cola 600.
The victory punched the 1 team’s ticket to the postseason while Byron, Briscoe, Allmendinger, Keselowski, Elliott, McDowell, Bell, Preece, and Gragson round out the top-10 finishers.
Other notable results include Erik Jones in 13th, Shane van Gisbergen in 14th, Denny Hamlin in 16th, Connor Zilisch making his first oval start in Cup coming home 23rd, and Tyler Reddick ending a promising night in 26th after making significant contact with wall around 25 laps to go.
For full race results, click here.
(Top Photo Credit: Logan Riely/Getty Images)
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