An 11-car crash halfway through the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway Saturday night ended Chase Elliott’s string of 27 races without a DNF when Kyle Busch clipped the Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on its right rear and sent it slamming into the outside frontstretch wall.
“I think Kyle (Busch) just didn’t know that we were trying to squeeze by the wreck on the bottom,” said Elliott, whose races without a DNF included the first 24 races this year and the last three events of 2024. “He was kind of angled back towards the bottom of the race track, and I was coming through. It’s just unfortunate.”
Elliott and Justin Haley were the only two drivers eliminated in the accident. Others involved in the lap 198 crash were Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Ty Dillon, Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Cole Custer and Erik Jones.
The accident started at the exit of turn two when Chastain was on the outside of Busch and the two banged together. Then as they entered turn three, Busch hit Briscoe in the rear, turning him sideways. Briscoe’s Toyota slid up the track and into the path of oncoming cars that piled into each other like bumper cars.
Prior to the accident, Elliott had completed 5,950 of the 5,951 laps run in NASCAR’s Cup Series 2025 season.
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