You can't call a
After all, Elliott came to COTA having won five of the previous 10 road races, and on Sunday the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix became No. 6 after
RELATED: Official results
Elliott's first victory of the season and 12th of his career accounted for significant milestones. He delivered the 268th Cup win for
It was also the 800th NASCAR Cup Series victory for Chevrolet.
"Yeah, man, I couldn't be more excited," said Elliott, the reigning Cup champion, who is tied for third with
"We kind of started the day, and we weren't very good. I just kept pushing myself and (we) made some good changes throughout the day and got to where I think we were on pace with those guys there at the end."
RELATED: Elliott's win achieves milestones for Hendrick, Chevrolet
A week after Hendrick drivers finished 1-2-3-4 at Dover, the organization grabbed the top two spots at the 3.41-mile, 20-turn road course, with
For all but the first few laps, drivers raced in the rain until it became too heavy to continue.
With challenging visibility on the long, high-speed backstretch, a crash on Lap 25 brought the race to a halt for the first time.
In a chain reaction, the
RELATED: Custer, Truex collide in second stage | Bell, Blaney, Harvick, Wallace crash
"I'm all good," Custer said after a trip to the infield care center. "It didn't hurt as much as I thought it was going to be, but it's just that you can't see anything. It's pretty bad. I mean, you can't see a foot in front of your car.
"I was just rolling down the backstretch. You can't see anything. I'm just so frustrated about having our day end like this. It killed the car, and it's just really frustrating."
The cars of Custer and Truex were damaged too severely to continue. Before that wreck occurred,
Even before the race went green, teams were faced with a choice. With rain seemingly imminent but the track dry to start the event, would a change to slick tires be in order, or would crew chiefs opt to stay on rain tires, which
RELATED:
Most of the field opted for slicks, and
Earlier in the day, in only the second Cup qualifying session of the 2021 season, Reddick won the pole in dry conditions with a lap at 92.363 mph. The pole was the first for a
"Road racing has been a big challenge in my career, and I've worked really hard to get better at it," said Reddick, who qualified fifth in the rain and finished eighth in Saturday's Xfinity Series race. "Running yesterday's NXS race helped me with some valuable seat time, so it's great to see all that hard work come together with a pole."
NOTE: Following post-race inspection,
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