What we learned after Chase Elliott's wild victory at Texas

Kyle Larson sat on the pole for the third straight weekend and led 77 laps in Sunday's race at Texas, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the results sheet. The 2021 Cup Series champion had a wheel fall off on lap 115, incurring a two-lap penalty that set him back in traffic. While he was able to get back on the lead lap, a late spin foiled any possibility of the No. 5 car getting back into contention for the win. Larson once more looked to be the fastest car in town, but if weird mistakes like this keep happening, it could doom his shot at a second championship.

The Chase Elliott of old showed up, and he's bad fast

When you don't win for 42 consecutive races, people forget how good you really are. That seemed to be the case with Elliott on Sunday, as the 2020 Cup Series champion led 39 laps and held off the likes of Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain to grab his first checkered flag since the fall of 2022 at Talladega. If Elliott parlays his momentum from this win into this next stretch of races, seeing the No. 9 car in victory lane may become a constant again, rather than an outlier. Remember, in 2022 - his last fully healthy season - Elliott won five races and made the Championship Four. That season included a victory at Talladega Superspeedway, where, coincidentally, the Cup Series goes next weekend. With three straight top-five finishes and a Texas-sized trophy under his belt, don't be surprised if NASCAR's most popular driver goes back-to-back. 

Ty Gibbs' day ruined by pit road abnormalities

Ty Gibbs qualified second for Sunday's race and seemed to be one of the favorites when the green flag flew, but pit road quickly ruined any chance the 21-year-old had of winning his first Cup Series race. After a fire near his pit stall forced him to stay out longer than the rest of the field, Gibbs got held up in traffic and lost time on the racetrack. As the race unfolded, varying pit strategies continued to mix up the running order, and while he did flirt with the top 10 in Stage Three, a 13th-place finish is all Gibbs has to show for his efforts, meaning that first career win will have to wait at least one more week. 

Underdogs dot the top 20

When you have a race with lots of cautions and varying pit strategies, you are inevitably going to get drivers at the front who aren't usually there. This was the case on Sunday as well, as drivers who spent most of their day struggling to stay in the top 30 in Austin Dillon (eighth) and Kyle Busch (ninth) both finished inside the top 10, as did Cup Series rookie Carson Hocevar (10th). Other notable underdogs include Daniel Suarez, (fifth) Chase Briscoe, (sixth) Ty Dillon (16th) and Daniel Hemric, (20th) the latter of which was the slowest car on track in Stage One. With a couple of top contenders in Hamlin and Larson finding bad fortune on Sunday, the drivers near the back of the pack took advantage and turned one man's trash into their own treasure.