KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports crew ate barbecue ribs in the setting autumn sunshine Sunday at Kansas Speedway. The sauce-slathered delicacy — provided by local purveyor Jack Stack — is a relatively new Victory Lane tradition at the 1.5-mile track, and Chase Elliott and track president Pat Warren shared the first bites as the camera shutters from the press clicked away.
There was plenty to go around, though, after Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400, a race won in dazzling fashion with a captivating 10th-to-first sprint in overtime by the 29-year-old driver that splintered Toyota’s short-lived monopoly on the top five on the final lap. Elliott’s powder-blue Chevrolet sat in front of the winner’s stage, pockmarked by the grit and grime from 400-plus miles on one of NASCAR’s most competitive tracks.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Kansas
Ribs and champagne might not seem like a tailor-made food pairing, but for No. 9 jackman T.J. Semke, that taste meant everything. The former Kansas University football walk-on grew up in Lee’s Summit, Missouri — 5 o’clock on the dial to downtown Kansas City, and a roughly 40-minute drive to the west-of-town speedway. He has Kansas City’s NFL team logo tattooed on his chest and named his dog Chief, naturally. So the post-race grub that he grew up on was not just celebratory, but also educational.
“You know, bottles and barbecue is a great combo,” Semke said, just after posing for photos with his brothers in Victory Lane. “But you tell these guys from North Carolina, from wherever they’re from about this Kansas City barbecue, and they … just … don’t … get it. So I was excited that they got to have a big slab of ribs in their face, sauce all over, doing it right in Kansas City.”
The sweet-heat taste was everywhere Sunday, and drivers and teams left the Sunflower State with a grab bag of results and outlooks for the rest of the Cup Series Playoffs spanning both sides of the flavor spectrum. One team had ribs. The others had the bones to pick.
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Bubba Wallace entered Sunday’s race as a former Kansas winner, but one who was left smarting from a 26th-place effort the weekend before at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The finish left him at the bottom of the playoff standings, with 27 points to make up to avoid elimination. Wallace said he stewed on the result for a few hours as he traveled home, but quickly moved past those blighted feelings, and his Saturday demeanor was relaxed but focused.
In past years, Wallace said the stress would have gotten to him. He’s made a 180-degree turn since.
He compared last weekend’s blip to playing a round of golf with a tour-level player, then watching that pro make an unforced error that demonstrates that they’re mortal. That’s the message he had for his 23XI Racing team after New Hampshire. We’re human. We just showed that to the rest of the Cup Series field. “So the next thing we’ve got to do is walk back up to the tee box and get ready to swing again,” Wallace said Saturday. “So today is our tee box.”
Sunday’s effort represented a big swing from Wallace that would have rated high in a long-drive contest. His No. 23 Toyota missed the handle early but came to life late, and Wallace guided it into the scoring pylon’s upper reaches just as the purse was ready to be paid out. A win would make that points deficit mathematically moot. When the field lined up for overtime, Wallace was the control car in the lead. The low-pressure approach he entered the weekend with was about to get a late-race jolt of motivation over the No. 23 team radio.
“You tell that (expletive) I’m talking about MJ from the free-throw line slam.”
“Message delivered.”
“… Take what’s yours.”
But then, here we go again. A version of the New Hampshire race’s intrasquad schism that pitted Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs in opposite corners a week ago flared anew in Kansas. This time, the drama again had Hamlin as a protagonist in the No. 11 he drives for JGR, but against the No. 23 Toyota he co-owns with famed free-throw-line dunker Michael Jordan, with Wallace behind the wheel of the friendly opposition in an allied 23XI Racing entry. That “how do you race your teammate” story line burbled all week. But now, Toyotas occupied all of the top five positions in relative harmony, and the team brass wanted to keep it that way.
Wallace had the upper hand for most of the two-lap dash to the end, parrying challenges by Toyota mates Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe while Hamlin moved close enough to strike. Hamlin crossed Wallace over for the final set of corners, then carried his employee up to the limits of the Turn 3 wall. As they made contact, the high-side momentum for both slowed while Elliott steamed forward in the low lane. Broadside contact with Hamlin’s No. 11 couldn’t keep Elliott from getting to the line first. For the fourth straight Kansas race, a Chevrolet team had dinner reservations for ribs in the center of the track. “That’s what’s frustrating the most,” said Wallace, who was last of the Toyota drivers placing second through fifth.
“We race hard every week. Toyota drivers race really hard every week, but we respect each other,” Wallace said, “and there’s a fine line that sometimes gets crossed, and you have to understand that.”
There appeared to be at least some understanding in the immediate aftermath. Wallace and Hamlin both leaned on their cars after unbuckling post-race, decompressing without any measure of confrontation. After a cooling-off period and a round or two with the media, Wallace walked over and told Hamlin “good job” with a brief embrace, clapping his hand on his back.
MORE: Last-lap contact dooms Hamlin, Wallace | Race Rewind: Kansas
Hamlin had his own aspirations, a task made far more difficult with the loss of nearly all of the power steering on his No. 11 Toyota in the final stage and a slight misstep on his final pit stop. Playoff advancement would be a big-picture bonus, but foremost on the list of goals was a milestone 60th win at the track where he made his Cup Series debut in 2005. Balancing the outcomes of the team he drives for versus the team he owns was the fine line he stepped over, but Hamlin maximized his performance as he has so many times in his 20th big-league season with 59 victories so far.
“If the 23 knocks him out, if the 23 wins, Joe Gibbs Racing is in a lot worse points scenario, let alone the 11. There’s a 20-some-point swing there, and Joe Gibbs Racing built his legacy as a driver,” said JGR competition director Chris Gabehart, Hamlin’s former crew chief. “And so I’m just … I hate it for the 23, but I’m so proud of Denny for giving it all he had. I think he’s in a tough spot here as the owner and driver on every given Sunday, because that microscope’s on him, and today he passed the test. I don’t know how else you look at it. As a driver of our cars — set aside the emotions of an alliance — as a driver of our cars, I don’t want anything less than what I just saw.”
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Pit stall 41 at Kansas Speedway is the last of the bunch by number, but the first one that drivers approach on their pit-road entry as they peel off Turn 4. The unimpeded path it provides for pit-stop service makes it an attractive choice, but the No. 9 crew had other reasons for wanting it.
A fourth-place qualifying effort by Elliott on Saturday afternoon afforded crew chief Alan Gustafson that luxury when it came time to pick.
“Coming here in the spring, we were in the same exact pit stall,” Semke said. “We had a bad stop that ultimately cost us the race, and I told Alan earlier this week, if we get a chance to get that same stall, I want some redemption. We got the exact same stall, got what we wanted, we laid down a great race and came out with the victory. So, damn it feels good.”
Redemption came in the form of consistent stops in the nine-second range, a rinse-repeat efficiency that gave the No. 9 crew the day’s top ranking and solidified its season-long No. 1 perch, according to NASCAR Insights analytics. But it also took shape thanks to a clever call from Gustafson to set Elliott up for overtime success. The final pit cycle landed under caution on Lap 255 — 12 laps to go in regulation and with two overtimes yet to come.
MORE: Cup Series standings | Playoff Pulse: Kansas
Gustafson opted for four fresh Goodyear tires while other front-runners took two. Elliott entered the pits in fourth place and exited in eighth, a drop in position chalked up to the extra time required for full service. The No. 9 was the first car to leave pit road on that strategy, and the redemption arc that the over-the-wall group so dearly wanted was then in Elliott’s hands.
“I think the key is we just all stick together and work through it, and those guys are performing at a super, super high level,” Gustafson said of the No. 9 pit crew. “… Yeah, do I think it was in the back of everybody’s mind that we wanted to atone for that? Sure. But I think the bigger picture, we’re focusing on the bigger picture and we want to try to win every week. Yeah, super proud of those guys. They deserve a lot of credit. They don’t get the credit they deserve. They’ve done an amazing job.
“I don’t know where they rank — everybody’s got a different metric — but they’re really high on the sheet every week, and I’m proud of them. They were, in my opinion, the best crew on pit road all day today and a huge part of our win.”
In the end, Elliott delivered on at least two things he discussed during media day a month ago before the playoffs began. “Consistency’s great,” he said Aug. 27, “but it’s not the end goal by any stretch.” That rang true in one of his radio exchanges with Gustafson before the last restart. When the veteran crew chief talked over the potential playoff implications of a Wallace win and how it might alter the elimination line, Elliott shot back to say forget the bubble. A win, even lined up at the back end of the top 10, was within reach.
Elliott also reiterated verbatim a pre-playoffs point he’d made five weeks ago: “A lot can happen in 10 weeks.” He noted that the length of the postseason allows for teams to have surges of success and cold patches, with enough time for the performance to undulate between each extreme. After a sweep of the opening three-race round, it appeared Toyota might boat-race the playoff field. Two-thirds through the Round of 12 and exactly halfway through the full 10-race bracket, that manufacturer balance has had some leveling.
Elliott caught one of those warming swells just right Sunday, earning another three races of playoff eligibility in the next round.
“What did I tell you? Playoffs is a long time. A lot can happen in 10 weeks,” Elliott said. “That can be the difference in somebody being mediocre to potentially getting on a hot streak or even a team collectively getting better throughout that course of time. So it’s all about buying yourself more time. If you’re not where you want to be, you’re just trying to buy yourself more time. Fortunately, we bought ourself three more weeks, and we’ll fight like hell until they tell us to not.”
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