NASCAR COTA winners and losers: Chase Elliott turns awful start into a top-5 finish

Yahoo

03-03-2025

Christopher Bell outlasted William Byron and Tyler Reddick in an intense final 10 laps to win the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix NASCAR Cup Series race at COTA on Sunday.
Bell passed Kyle Busch for the lead with six laps to go, then held off Byron and Reddick over the final laps with some superb defensive driving.
Bell has now won back-to-back races, and Sunday's win was his third career win at a road course.
Busch led 42 laps, but his tires were used up on the final run and fell back to a fifth-place finish.
Here are the winners and losers from Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race at COTA:
DEBUT UP IN SMOKE: Connor Zilisch's NASCAR Cup debut ends early after crashing into teammate Daniel Suarez
SUNDAY'S RACE RESULTS: Who won NASCAR COTA race? Winner is Christopher Bell, plus full results
Sometime in the future, anyone who looks up Elliott's 2025 season race log will look up his COTA fourth-place finish and not be surprised by the result for one of the best road races in the series.
But it wasn't nearly that easy, and Elliott's day was the most eventful in the field.
Elliott started third and was turned around by the first turn, spun by Ross Chastain who inexplicably dive-bombed into the corner on the opening lap. Despite a toe-link issue in the left rear and poor track position, Elliott's team worked on the car throughout the afternoon. For most of the first and second stages, Elliott ran outside the top 25.
Elliott drove up into the top 20 early in the third stage but had shown OK pace. But crew chief Alan Gustafson opted to pit from inside the top 20 during the final caution, allowing Elliott to unleash with fresher tires.
Elliott moved from 23rd to 4th in the final 13 laps, making for a good finish on a trying day.
Noah Gragson is not known for his road course racing ability; his best finish in the Cup Series at road course coming into Sunday was 11th at Watkins Glen last season.
But Gragson led a strong day for Front Row Motorsports with an eighth-place finish, one of two top-10 finishes for FRM.
Todd Gilliland finished 10th after an up-and-down day, his third career top-10 finish on a road course.
FRM needed a good day after some poor finishes on the drafting tracks to open the season, and they got it on Sunday.
"Loser" is maybe too strong a word, but it will certainly be a bittersweet look back at what could have been at COTA for the four-car Trackhouse Racing team.
Shane van Gisbergen controlled the majority of the first two stages, showing strength with long-run speed and opting to play strategy and pit before the end of the stages. Because of that, SVG and the No. 88 team opted against picking up points for the long-term vantage point of winning the race.
Instead, SVG got stacked up during a restart early in the third stage and slid outside the top five. He couldn't fully recover after staying out on older tires on the next-to-last run in reaction to track position, finishing in sixth. While the finish was solid, SVG only has four more road course races to secure a playoff spot. Expectations are high for him with this type of racing, and the margin of error will tighten up with every road race he does not win in 2025.
Throwing back to that restart in which van Gisbergen slipped outside the top five: the restart occurred after the first non-stage end caution of the day involving Trackhouse drivers Daniel Suarez and Connor Zilisch. Suarez spun around a corner, and Zilisch hit Suarez in the right rear as Zilisch tried to avoid his teammate.
Zilisch's day started with a Lap 1 cut tire and ended with the Lap 50 crash. In between, he was one of the fastest cars on the track and moved up into the top 15 in Stage 2. Had he stayed out of trouble, Zilisch would have been in contention in his first Cup Series start.
Ross Chastain, after a Lap 1 dive into turn 1 that spun Chase Elliott, had an otherwise quiet 12th-place finish.
So it wasn't all bad for Trackhouse. But it could have been much, much better.
Three former road-course winners for Hendrick Motorsports all were involved in incidents that negatively impacted their days, but only Kyle Larson could not recover.
Larson's day had a major setback with two laps to go in Stage 2 when his right-front wheel came off the car right after a late-stage pit stop. Larson had to serve a two-lap penalty and never recovered, finishing 32nd.
Chase Elliott (Lap 1 spin) and Alex Bowman (multiple track limit penalties and a spin) recovered from their issues for top-10 finishes. Larson could not.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NASCAR COTA winners and losers: Chase Elliott turns awful start into top-5 finish