Chastain wins Coke 600 as Byron, Hamlin dramatically do not

When Ross Chastain was released from the infield care center after crashing his primary car on Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, he rejoined his No. 1 team with a paradoxical laughter.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said to team owner Justin Marks and crew chief Phil Surgen.

It’s been kind of a grind the past calendar year for Trackhouse Racing. Prior to crashing out of practice on Saturday, they were the fastest in almost every statistical measurement, and that hasn’t often been the case during this organizational skid.  

Marks said that was their key takeaway even in the face of adversity.

“Obviously, we had a problem in practice, went to the backup car, started last, but the confidence was really, really high,” Marks said. “When we wrecked this car on Saturday and I was sitting there at the car in the garage, and they were pulling parts off it, and Ross left the infield care center and walked up to the car, he had a huge smile on his face.

“He was, like, I know this sucks but that's what I'm talking about. Bringing car to the racetrack like that, that's what I'm talking about.”

Part of that was just an honest assessment but it was also motivation for Surgen and their team as they constructed a backup car down the road at Trackhouse headquarters, the benefit of having a home race.

Surgen personally got two hours of sleep leading his crew.

“Probably 30 people there at 8:30 last night,” Surgen said. “As the night wore on and different stages of the process kind of evolved, we sent some of those guys home, and the last of us, there were probably eight or ten of us that left at 2:30 last night. The first guys got back there at 5:30.

“So a couple of hours of sleep and back at it this morning. We worked all the way up until the wire until we had to re-inspect today at 2:00 p.m.”

Their job was done and then Chastain did his – methodically working his way through the field and becoming the first driver to win from a last place starting spot since Bobby Allison at Richmond in 1969.

54 years!

“I mean, it's sinking in that we won the World 600,” Chastain said using the original event branding. “We won the Coke 600, but what that means for the team and me and everything else, I mean, you saw us crash yesterday. They were up until 2:30. I left at 10:00. They stayed there long after I was gone. They were back at 5:30. They rebuilt the car, and we put ourselves in -- we just slowly worked our way.

“It took all 600 miles. A 400-mile race here, we don't get there. We're not in contention. It took the whole time.”

Chastain, the figurative diamond in the rough, carried his team to a victory after contributing to their setback. It’s part and parcel to the identity of this organization that Chastain picks up the organization and carries them, both in the micro and macro.

“Ross, you know, he's such an elite talent, and he's really one of the founding members of this organization,” Marks said. “What I've said throughout the year is the problem that we have to diagnose is the fact that we don't unload with a lot of speed.

“We have to do a lot of work on the weekends to put races together, and the execution that Ross and a lot of the teams inside of Trackhouse have is really, really good on Sundays. It's just really hard to do it in this era of the sport. If you're starting 25th, 28th, 30th, whatever, to get up there is really, really difficult to do.”

Those Who Didn’t

On the other hand of Chastain needing nearly all 600 miles to win the race was the stories of the two drivers who led a vast majority of the laps while he was charging forward in William Byron and Denny Hamlin.

Specifically, Byron led 283 of the 400 laps and swept all four stages. Chastain led the final six laps. Byron got caught in the dirty air behind Joey Logano, fighting to stay on the lead lap, and just didn’t make the right defensive positions.

“I’m frustrated, obviously; just lost the race, so it’s frustrating,” Byron said. “I wish I had won it. He was catching me, and I was trying to defend. He had a run down the frontstretch, and I tried to protect against that, but it was too much. There was a moment I got loose in 3 and 4, I was able to hang on but lost momentum, and that’s what gave him the run.”

And yeah, he was a little frustrated in real time with Logano.

“He was doing the usual,” Byron said.

His big points day did allow him to retake the championship lead over teammate Kyle Larson, who crashed out earlier in the race.

There are fuel issues on the No. 11 car!!! pic.twitter.com/Cx5vcz3ur7

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 26, 2025

Hamlin seemed like the most likely challenger to dethrone Byron at the end, passing him at least once in the final two stages, but an issue with the second fuel can during his last pit stop left his 15 laps short of the finish.

“No fuel came out of the can,” Hamlin said. “… I saw that it got plugged in, but there was no fuel in the can, or there was nothing going into the car.”

Hamlin was told around the 20 to go mark.

“Once they told me that I was short on fuel, at that point I kind of stopped chasing the 24,” Hamlin said. “Just because I’m not going to risk trying to get in the fence when I’m too short on fuel anyway.”

Tyler Reddick tagged the wall a few laps before Hamlin ran out of gas but it didn’t draw the caution that would have made the issue moot.

“It certainly would have helped,” Hamlin said of a caution. “We would’ve all came back in (to pit) and at least rerack there.

“I just wanted to see that last run kind of play out. “It was still a great finish, great race anyway, and it’s fun battling up front. Nobody could lead because everyone would get too loose. My car was better in second [place] but fast enough to lead. But once I led, it was too loose, so we were just back and forth and obviously put on a great show.”

Hamlin finished 16th, a fourth straight result outside of the top-15, due to mechanical failures and now a fueling issue.

“I feel good about our performance,” Hamlin said. “I feel crappy about how we finish. That’s been the story of the last month, and not much has changed.”

As for whether the issue was a mechanical issue or an execution one, crew chief Chris Gayle wasn’t sure yet.

“Don't really know yet,” Gayle said. “It could be a little of both. We need to investigate that part of it but it definitely, for the amount of time we were plugged in, combined between both cans, we were way short the fuel we thought we should get.

“So we'll have to look. There could be a lot of things that could restrict that flow or cause a problem, you know.”

Gayle actually knew it within a lap of Hamlin leaving the pit box but didn’t tell his driver in the hopes they would catch that caution.

“At this point in his career, it made sense to leave him out there as long as I could because I don’t care about seventh or eighth place, when we have an opportunity to win, right,” Gayle added. “We get plenty of those. We needed a caution before we had to go pit and I just wanted him focused on making lap time knowing we wouldn’t have to tell him until 15 laps or so until he was going to run out.”

Larson's Double DNF

The planed Memorial Day Weekend 1100 only reached a combined 595 miles for Kyle Larson on Sunday.

Larson crashed out of the Indianapolis 500 on Lap 92 and got a head start back to Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. He led 34 laps from the front row until he spun from the lead on Lap 43. He had hit the wall prior to that, damaging his toe link.

He returned to the lead lap on Lap 200 but then got caught up in the below Ryan Blaney, Daniel Suarez and Chase Briscoe three-wide crash.

Contact! 😱

Shortly after a restart, @Blaney, @Daniel_SuarezG and @KyleLarsonRacin are caught up in this crash! #CocaCola600 pic.twitter.com/LnnQTUNCwe

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 26, 2025

“I thought our team was doing a good job to get the car back in better shape there to just chip away at it and contend for a decent finish,” Larson said. “But yeah, just hate the way that the day went. I wish I could just hit reset and try again tomorrow, but the reality is that’s not gonna happen.”

Is he going to try The Double again next year?

“The Double is just a tough undertaking,” Larson said. “I think the window of time is too tight. Even if I didn’t wreck (at Indy), I don’t think I would have made it here in time and probably would have had to end that race short anyway.

“I just don’t really think it’s worth it, but I would love to run the Indy 500 again. Just doing the Double, I think, is just logistically too tough.”

This weekend was doomed last year too when a rain delay at Indianapolis forced him to miss the rain-shortened 600 entirely. The 2025 race again was delayed by rain at the start. That race weekend left him dejected and NASCAR even changed its rules to discourage a driver like Larson from picking another race over a NASCAR event ever again.

“What I’m feeling at the end of the night feels very similar,” Larson said. “Just very bummed and sad about how it all went. Just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

Good days

Brad Keselowski is entirely in must-win territory to make the Cup Series playoffs but he also scored a moral victory of sorts with his first top-5 and top-10 simultaneously.

It ends a worst career start to a season in which he has finished worse than 25th nine times in 12 races.

Keselowski even needed to drive through the field twice to get there. He worked his way into the top-15 in the first half, fell back into the 30s and clawed his way to a fifth-place.

“Got mixed up in some stuff at the midpoint of the race and clawed our way out,” Keselowski said afterwards. “Feel like if we could have gotten to the lead, we could have won the race.”

 Keselowski won the pole for the All-Star Race and the RFK Racing team he co-owns with Jack Roush and the Fenway Sports Group has fast race cars for Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece but the 2012 champion has been saddled with misfortune after misfortune this season.

“We’ve been really competitive the last few weeks,” Keselowski added. “I feel like it hasn’t all come together and it still hasn’t come all together. This car has the speed to win the race and I need to go get it. It shows what we’re capable of, but I want to win.”

AJ Allmendinger jumped from 25th to 17th in the standings with his first top-5 in the form of a fourth place finish.

He was 14th and in a playoff spot a month ago before a crash at Texas and an engine failure at Kansas sunk him deep into the standings. But the Kaulig Racing No. 16 has shown top-10 speed at many points this season and Allmendinger just needed to upend the slump.

We ran inside the top-five, top-six through most of the race. We needed a little bit more to get to the next level, but I’m super proud of everyone at Kaulig Racing. We had a tough three weeks there, but it’s great to come back and show up with a lot of speed. I told Sgt. Nicole Gee that’s on the side of our race car, I told her family I was going to do everything I could to try to get them in victory lane. It was close! It meant a lot to be able to meet her family. We know what this day is truly about, so I’m proud I could give her a great ride. Almost got all of us to victory lane.”

Michael McDowell has similarly shown top-10 speed all season and finally got one on Sunday too with a P7. The driver of the Spire Motorsports No. 77 climbed back to 20th in the standings.

He did so recovering from a first pit stop mistake in which he missed his stall and was forced to restart at the rear of the field.

“It was a great night for the No. 71 Chevrolet team. I was bummed out about my mistake there early on with missing the pit box. We had a lot of speed in our Chevrolet, so really thankful for everyone at Spire Motorsports. I hate it for Carson (Hocevar). He was up there racing for the win. Not sure what happened there, but it was unfortunate for them. I was thankful to get back up to the front after a long night. It was just a big mistake on my part. I’m thankful to get a top-10 and miss some of the wrecks there. I’m really proud of the speed we had. We’ll try to build some momentum here and head to Nashville (Superspeedway).”

Carson Hocevar challenged for the lead for a considerable portion of the race but the results don't show it because this happened:

The engine blows on the No. 77!

Heartbreak for @CarsonHocevar! pic.twitter.com/40mfANrDcL

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 26, 2025

Results

Provisional Playoff Grid