Chase Elliott rolled off the grid at Richmond in 5th place, looking every bit like he had the car to hang with the frontrunners. But almost as soon as the green flag dropped, things started sliding in the wrong direction. By the end of Stage 1, it was clear that the day wouldn’t be easy. Still, the #9 team kept grinding, but only for it to fall short despite no fault of their own. Unfortunately, it was a split-second moment in the chaos of a wreck that changed everything.

What can we say… It was a sad day to be Chase. After pulling off a unique Top-20 finish streak in all of his races this season except Watkins Glen, the Cook Out 400 was where Elliott’s luck came undone. Stage 1 was the first warning sign, as the Hendrick Motorsports racer slipped outside the top 10 and struggled with track position. Still, Elliott and his crew kept their heads down, mounting a steady comeback on fresher tires and putting themselves in a position to climb back toward the front. “We finally got on some better tires and we were making our way through there well, so I was excited to see where that was going to go,” Elliott said post-race.

Well, his excitement didn’t last long. Everything came apart on Lap 198 in a massive wreck, started by Kyle Busch when he contacted Chase Briscoe’s right-rear entering Turn 3, during a three-wide battle. Briscoe swiftly spun onto oncoming traffic. Denny Hamlin, Justin Haley, Brad Keselowski, Ross Chastain, Ty Dillon, Cole Custer, Busch himself, and Erik Jones were part of the 11-car pileup. Regrettably, Elliott became the 12th. Entering the regular-season race second in points, Elliott tried to sneak past the wreck on the bottom (which he almost did), when Busch hit his right-rear corner. The HMS veteran, as a result, was sent to the outside wall nose-first, earning his first DNF of the season. “I have no idea what happened,” the driver later began.

 “I saw them crashing and were all stacking up, trying to get stopped…We’d all stacked up in the wreck there, and I guess he, I’m sure [Busch] just didn’t know I was coming by on the bottom. Really awkward because we were kind of done wrecking, I hate that,” Elliott fumed. “Had the wreck missed, I thought, and was just trying to kind of get by the last of it there at the end, and Kyle must have maybe got some damage and was just kind of pointed back toward the bottom, and there was a couple of us coming by down there.”

“Whoever was next to me [Zane Smith] and myself were trying to get through the accident, and we were coming through there at a decent rate. Unfortunately, Kyle just didn’t know that we were on the bottom. Hate that. We had a good start to the night, and it slowly unraveled until it finally fell apart. Hopefully, I get on a better stretch, starting next week,” he reiterated.

The crash cost Elliott crucial points in the championship fight. William Byron has won the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Championship. For Elliott, what looked like a golden chance to grab momentum instead turned into the kind of night that brought a heartbreaking ending to his 2025 regular season.

Byron clinches regular-season title

William Byron entered Richmond just needing a modest buffer to clinch the regular-season crown. And with a 12th-place finish in the Cook Out 400, he did just that. He crossed the finish line by safely settling in the middle of the pack, comfortably securing the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Championship, his first. Moreover, he locked in an additional 15 playoff points to complement the 17 he’d previously earned during the season.

Byron had needed to finish the race at least 62 points ahead of the second-place driver to clinch the title. Thanks to Chase Elliott’s race-ending crash on Lap 198 (not to mention a strong, steady drive from Byron), he ended up 68 points clear with one race remaining before the postseason. The last time a regular-season championship was clinched with a race to go was in 2020. Remember when Kevin Harvick sealed the deal right after the penultimate race at Dover?

“That’s the best 12th-place finish we’ve ever had,” Byron said with a grin, acknowledging how crucial consistency and teamwork were to the outcome. “We came in here and just did a solid job… this is definitely our toughest track. We had a solid plan and executed it.”

Byron’s path to the regular-season title wasn’t without turbulence. After opening the year with a standout win in the Daytona 500 and another victory at Iowa, he hit a mid-season rough patch. Shockingly, that included five finishes of 27th or worse! Still, he rebounded with consistent performances in August. And the plucky run at Richmond sealed the deal just one week early.

Meanwhile, Elliott’s crash looms large. Now, Byron heads into the regular-season finale at Daytona with both a championship and a sizable head start. He is poised and primed for a playoff run that could very well lead to championship glory.